SMART THINKER
Disability activist Sinéad Burke has always loved fashion – but the world of design has long excluded her, and anyone who didn’t fit the standard mould. Now, Burke is working to create a more inclusive model for the future.
Disability activist Sinéad Burke has always loved fashion, but the design world has long excluded anyone who didn’t fit the standard mould. So Burke is striving to create a more inclusive model for the future.
Nothing expands us as people quite like looking at the world in a way we never have before. In the past few decades, everything has been up for grabs, as we have held culture, morality, gender – even age-old institutions like marriage up to the light to be re-examined in a contemporary context.
But can our modern taste for questioning everything, and our desire for inclusion for all, penetrate the fashion world – whose entire appeal is based on the ideal of exclusivity?
You bet, says one of the world’s most exciting advocates, Sinéad Burke. The Irish disability activist, little person and selfconfessed fashion fan showcases her fabulous, flamboyant style and advocacy on social media.
Burke’s presence on the global stage as a speaker at TED Talks and Davos World Economic Forums, and her commitment to personal expression, is helping to reinvent how we see not only differently-abled people, but fashionistas as well – who have, until recently, ruthlessly adhered to the same tall and pin-thin body ideal as professional models. Burke’s influence is such that she joins British Vogue as a contributing editor, and the high fashion label Burberry has re-tailored some preferred pieces from a recent collection for her.
“I love the creativity and personal expression of fashion, and the talent of the designers,” Burke says. “It is transformative.”
But Burke’s appreciation did not blind her to the architecture, design and fashion worlds’ lack of inclusion of her community.
“There has been a lot of exclusion in the past for disabled customers who never got to see themselves in fashion imagery – or, to go further back in the manufacturing chain, couldn’t find fashionable clothes they wanted to wear,” she explains. “Now we are challenging people in their thinking and awareness is starting to increase – which is why it’s so important to include the voices of disabled people in the whole process.”
Burke’s personal perspective allows her to advocate holistic, far-reaching change that goes beyond the obvious quick fix. “It’s not just about creating a range of clothing for little people or a plus-size range of clothing – although that is helpful,” she says. “That is progress, rather than the entire solution.
“Let’s just say a plus-size woman and I went shopping together. We would still have to go to our ‘special sections’ of the store – while whoever sits in the kind of normative middle continues to shop in the ‘store proper’. That’s not true inclusion: instead, we are further isolating people in what is supposed to be a social experience.”
Burke also weaves the rising awareness around sustainability into her vision for an improved fashion environment for the differently abled.
“The role of technology will allow the industry to cater to a greater range of body types at the manufacturing level,” she explains. “As it stands, the clothes I wear require alteration. When the fashion world truly adapts, I will be able to order a pair of jeans with a specific leg length, so I won’t have to cut away fabric. This then reduces waste. It’s about changing the way we have been thinking, behaving and working for such a long time.”
Does Burke believe that the fashion world and wider public are ready to embrace change? “You can’t convince everybody in every single social movement, but it has been inspiring to see how most people understand the validity and the purpose of this work. For me it’s about educating and having conversations with those people who are invested and bringing them along.”