British fashion world tries to include more disabled people

From Kate Spicer at The Times in the UK:

When Metallica’s world tour kicked off last winter, my siblings and I decided it was time our brother, Tom, 38, got to see his ultimate heroes lives. Tom has the most common form of inherited learning disability, fragile X syndrome; he lives in a lovely residential care home in rural Devon, so getting to see his beloved Metallica is a challenge of epic proportions, especially considering his bundle of specific disabilities.

The moment was so profoundly special for us all, especially Tom, that it made me feel joy and then a creeping, depressing realisation. There are 1.5m people in the UK with learning disabilities. The spectrum is wide, some have severe disabilities, others have minor problems with learning and speech. But for all of them, getting anywhere near their dreams and passions, or having their voices heard, is not by any means a given. Access to hardcore music, fashion, late nights and generally funky stuff is especially hard. However, a small but significant cultural movement is advocating a greater mingling of the learning disabled (LD) in these, for want of a better word, hipper pockets of society.

What’s exciting is that we aren’t talking special-needs projects tucked away in community centres. Mencap’s regular Rock the Boat club night, at Proud Galleries, the skinny muso favourite in Camden, features DJs such as Tim Westwood and Seb Fontaine playing to a crowd that becomes ­progressively more mixed through the night and has a warmth and gentleness to it that you may not have experienced in such spiky homes of pose. Alex Proud, the gallery owner, says: “I wanted to act as an example to the rest of the trade. Why are we so embarrassed about learning disability? If we can do this, so can everyone else. People enjoy being round people who lack the British reserve.”

The first night, in July, featured a set by Heavy Load, possibly the most genuinely punk band touring today, featuring three LD members — the lead singer, Simon Barker (pictured), is a chain-smoking cocky wit. Heavy Load made an award-winning docu­mentary feature film, and are in the vanguard of the Stay up Late campaign, which aims to give LD people more access to nights out and nocturnal “disco-friendly” assistance — more of a lifestyle, basically.

At Glastonbury this summer, the band joined other disabled artists on the Club DaDa stage in the Shangri-La field; next year, the festival organisers plan to integrate the bands onto other stages. Other exciting LD artists include the ­rapper Ben Pelham, 21, who has performed on stage with the Cuban Brothers, and the soulful LD singer Lizzie Emeh, 32, who spoke last month on the Today programme, prior to a performance at the Royal Festival Hall. She has talked about being called “a retard”: “I am this Lizzie Emeh, with a learning disability. Don’t be frightened of me, frightened of us. If you let us into your hearts, we will love you back.”

Fashion has also been a closed world to those with learning disabilities, so in a bid to challenge that, Style got together with the photographer Rankin, not one to shy away from controversial or challenging subjects, and the stylist Gary Harvey, fashion director of 125 magazine, to produce a fashion shoot styled by three LD fashion lovers. Harvey enlisted Kitty Gilbert, Jess Bromley, and his brother Ian, who often assists him on shoots. “I always love Ian’s creative assistance. He has a very free, open-minded approach,” Harvey says. “I’m shy compared to him. He has no problems dancing with the sexiest woman in the room. But I still encounter people who are, like, ‘I don’t want him to touch me.’ I have to say, those people are immediately not friends.” Harvey, who has produced four LD high-fashion collaborations, says: “I just want to provoke dialogue, get people asking themselves how they could include different people in their business.”

It is great to watch a photographer like Rankin in an intense dialogue with Jess about how she wants the model’s Versace gown to move. At her insistence, the wind machine is turned up. Rankin’s take on it all is typically pragmatic for someone who made a star of the double-amputee model and athlete Aimee Mullins. “It’s just like working with any stylist, it’s a collaboration,” he says. “I don’t think about this as working with something identifiably different, this is all about promoting people with disabilities as just normal people.”

Meanwhile, Kitty’s flicking through a rail of clothes. She’s digging the Gucci. “I love short skirts and a leggy look,” she says. A Jonathan Saunders bolero goes on top. Later, and very excited when it’s finally his turn to shoot, Ian throws on a bright Vivienne Westwood woman’s coat with glee.

For all the fun of the shoot, this area still contains deep, depressing and multifaceted issues. But cultural shame associated with learning disabilities is less than it was, and access to a real life, not some institutional pale imitation of it, is more available. Change, after all, is infectious.