-By Ankita Dutta.
British Vogue is cooperating with Tilting the Lens, writer Sinéad Burke’s accessibility consulting agency, for their May 2023 issue, titled “Reframing Fashion,” to honour and celebrate the disabled groups in the fashion industry.
The issue features five disabled changemakers on its five covers, including actress Selma Blair, model Ellie Goldstein, American Sign Language performer Justina Miles, model Aaron Rose Philip, and Burke herself. The magazine’s material was prepared with an eye towards equity on photoshoot sets and in reporting. The British Vogue crew also took part in a course on digital accessibility.
This edition of British Vogue, as well as all future editions, will be offered in audio format for the first time, and for Braille readers in both physical and digital versions, thanks to a collaboration with the Royal National Institute of Blind People.
Tilting the Lens founder Sinéad Burke has been a vocal campaigner for disability rights in fashion. Burke discussed her ongoing mission to make fashion more inclusive in a recent conversation with Imran Amed for The BoF Show. “Fashion has the power to change how society views people,” she argues.
British Vogue and Tilting the Lens’ cooperation is an important step towards advancing disability rights in the fashion industry. The magazine is establishing an example for other media to follow by recognising disabled changemakers and providing accessibility.
‘[Creating this issue] was an essential and overdue education for everybody – and taught us many lessons we will carry forward into the future,’ editor-in-chief Edward Enninful wrote in the issue.
‘We all participate in fashion, but does fashion participate in all of us?’ he says on the cover. The theme of the cover, ‘Dynamic, Daring, and Disabled,’ he says, depicts the ‘dynamism of spirit, creativity, and imagination,’ which ‘the stars of this issue have in spades.’
He went on to say that the industry, including Vogue, must address this issue in order ‘to better serve the Disabled community, alongside the Disabled community, with jobs, in the design of store locations, photographic studios, online interfaces, events, communications, and, of course, clothing.’
Vogue collaborated closely with accessibility consultant Tilting the Lens and its chief executive, Irish activist Sinéad Burkem, to develop this issue, with Sinéad stating that it will help to make a ‘call to action for the much-needed reform in other sections of the fashion industry, and beyond’.
‘Accessibility and disability inclusion are everyone’s responsibility and opportunity – this is a movement, not a flash in the pan,’ he added. he added.
