How can designers be inclusive?

Fashion design is about bodies at the core: 1 Granary’s Reflections with Ben Barry

Change can be radical. But behind what seems like a revolutionary shift is often a decades-long process, with dedicated thinkers and practitioners tirelessly chipping away. Change in fashion representation is no different. When we started 1 Granary a decade ago, diversity was a seed slowly growing in the industry. We’ve now seen more unconventional beauty on runways thanks to streetcasting, and we’ve seen a wider variety of bodies in advertising spurred on by the audience’s need for inclusivity together with the efforts of creative leaders. One such leader is Ben Barry, who joined Parsons as Dean and Associate Professor of Equity and Inclusion back in 2021. Prior to that, he was the Chair of Fashion at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly known as Ryerson), where he worked hard to reshape the curriculum to be truly inclusive – not in a tokenistic way. We wanted to speak with Ben for Reflections because education remains at the heart of innovation and instigating change, and he’s paving the way for how we think about bodies from a design perspective. At the seed-level of change, that means expanding and encouraging access to those who have traditionally been excluded from fashion education, welcoming students with a variety of worldviews, practices and bodies – be they Native American, Black, latinx, South Asian, disabled and/or fat.

“When we talk about bodies,” Ben says, “I think at the core is that the fashion education and industry’s approach has been to maintain the dominant status quo. And then sprinkle in some diversity.” He takes a stark departure and emphasises the creativity, joy and possibility ditching the status quo can bring. “All bodies are creative openings for new design opportunities, for new silhouettes, for new shapes, for new ways of thinking about design.” We speak about what inclusivity means in a practical way beyond being a buzzword the industry likes to use, the challenge of changing our mindset around this theme, and the creative argument for designing for every body.