Luxury brands are slowly addressing the needs of underserved communities, aiming to close the inclusivity gap through pioneering approaches to disability and adaptive practices. The key is viewing these changes not as adjustments, but as simple equitability – creating products and services that cater for all consumers.
: Changing the Faces of Fashion: Representation is crucial for fostering inclusive brands and cultures. For consumers with disabilities – often excluded from luxury spaces – visibility is the first vital step. Despite 16% of the global population having a visible disability, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), models with visible disabilities appear in only 0.02% of fashion campaigns, according to The Guardian. Notably, fashion designers like Sinéad O’Dwyer are embracing inclusivity by castings models of mixed abilities, sizes and ethnicities.
: Accessible Customer Experiences: Making in-store experiences inclusive is also essential. Empowering customers with disabilities to navigate these spaces independently is even more important. Gucci’s partnership with the accessibility app Aira provides blind and low-vision users with free visual assistance in Gucci stores and offices and at events. The app describes store layouts, potential barriers, and locates product categories, fitting rooms and checkout counters.
: Adaptable Clothing Standards: Creating clothing that is accessible and covetable is another opportunity – helping to shift the adaptive design conversation away from function to blend the worlds of adaptive wear and luxury fashion together. Werable does exactly that – merging artistic inspirations with adaptive features like easy-grip ring zippers, in-seam pockets for medical equipment, magnetic single-hand fastenings and fully adjustable waistbands.
Continue the conversation: What does accessible fashion mean to your clients? Discuss the role luxury could play in ensuring the industry represents all of its consumers.
Image: Sinéad O’Dwyer spring/summer 2023 fashion show
Image: Dream It Real initiative by The Coach Foundation
Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are striving to go beyond tokenism to enable real transformation. Luxury brands are focusing on collaboration and transparency to foster positive change for the next generation of talent.
: Collaborating for Gender Equality: To demonstrate transparency and accountability, luxury brands are teaming up with external organisations committed to social betterment. In April 2024, Dior and UNESCO came together for its latest global conference celebrating education, equity, inclusion and gender equality. Leaders from the LVMH Group, Maison Dior and UNESCO spoke at the event to advocate for women’s rights and empowerment in a range of areas.
: Progress beyond Performativity: The British Fashion Council’s inaugural DEI report uncovered the discrepancies between how inclusive brands think they are – and the reality. Of the white men who responded to the UK survey, only 14% believe the industry is not diverse, while this number rose to 54% for women of colour and 48% for people with disabilities.
LVMH’s It’s Everyone’s Business is a series that aims to uncover the diverse realities of the luxury conglomerate, showing the challenges of the workforce – which spans 190 nationalities, four generations and 80 countries – in their own words in a bid to promote transparency and understanding.
: Empowering Inclusive Talent: Providing diverse individuals access to the industry is another challenge. Luxury fashion must recruit talent from various backgrounds for success. Coach, for example, has awarded 5,279 scholarships to overcome economic barriers and supported over 170,000 students globally through its Dream It Real initiative. Coach also combats nepotism by pairing students with mentors from Coach and Tapestry to help them break into the industry.
Continue the conversation: Discuss your clients’ relationship with brands and their environmental, social and governance (ESG) outputs. How does this affect their image of a brand and brand loyalty?
