their Body, their Style

There's something my mind tends to drift to whenever I see a Person with Special Needs in public.

 

And it's this.

 

How, and why is it, that in this age of inclusivity and all-embracing society, have we never considered designing beautiful clothes specifically for this niche of the market?

 

Now, I'm not jumping ahead of myself and saying that it's never been done, or has never been considered. Maybe it has, and that it's not commercially viable. Maybe a renowned designer has in fact designed a beautiful dress for someone with Down's Syndrome, but has never brought it to runway or to market. Maybe there are dedicated stores in dedicated places that offer dedicated clothes for these individuals in our society who, with what they have or who they are, possess bodies that are of distinctive shape and size. 

 

I don't know.

 

So maybe I could be just yammering away without doing my due diligence.

 

But I'm not here to say that it's never been done.

 

I'm only saying that I've never seen it in the market. I've never seen it in the luxury brands, I've never seen it in the trendy streetwear brands, I've never seen it in the fast fashion stores and most certainly I've never seen it worn on the bodies of any Person with Special Needs.

 

Mind, this is not a label. With so many people championing causes these days, I have to clarify that I'm not labeling them. I'm collectively describing them the same way we'd describe someone as curvy or plus-sized or waif-skinny or amputee.

 

I wonder, always, why it is that these Persons are most frequently clad in tee shirts, tee shirts and more tee shirts, or if not, in polo tees, pull up pants with elastic waistbands, and skirts that emphasize nothing beautiful of their distinctive bodies.

 

The problem is not with their bodies.

 

The problem is that the clothes that clad their bodies aren't designed to fit them. The problem is that the clothes that they wear aren't cut to show off the best of their bodies. Sure, some will argue that they don't really have model-esque bodies. But hey, we're not talking V.S . Angels here.

 

Which means that if us non-models have outfits and styles that bring out the best in us, so do they.

 

The outfits might be cut entirely differently though. V-necks and boat-shapes and flouncy frills and tunics and peplum might make a world of difference for us between the feminine versus boyish shapes, but for the Persons, it could be an entirely different outfit altogether that combines various elements to bring out their strengths and conceal their weaknesses and just make them look good. And perhaps, it would be possible that what might look good on them might look terrible on someone else.

 

Still, fashion celebrates individualism and quirkiness and flamboyancy, does it not? So who knows if an influencer with millions of followers decides to don this outfit for Persons on the streets of New York or France or Milan or London during the Big Four and get snapped and get onto fashion blogs and Instagram?

 

They deserve it. These Persons.

 

They deserve it as much as we do.

colors make small plates lively

It's good that we're getting them to be models so that mannequins in their figure-shapes can be manufactured for the display of clothes at the store window.

 

It's good that we're getting them to be models and even to design their own clothes. I've seen her at MBFW, and she totally deserves that applause that she got from the audience cos' she worked d*** hard to achieve the dream she had.

 

But I think it would be better still if they'd get to have cocktail dresses and power pants and lovely blouses or styles that bring out the best of their figures, whether they be the chubby sort, the curvy sort, the big-breasted sort, the small-breasted sort, the stocky sort, whichever it might be. I think it would be so wonderful if they had an outfit or two under the Special Occasions category which they could call their own, wear it with pride and confidence and know with certainty that this style is theirs, and theirs to own.

 

Is it excluding them from society? Will it be an attempt to not normalize them? Will they get cruel comments like, "hey, you're wearing clothes that are meant for 'stoopid people'," or "hey, your dress is a D.S. dress!" Will the clothes themselves be ostracized as the individuals themselves are ostracized? 

 

If you ask me, the Persons themselves are already experiencing it. There's very little difference between one and the other. If a person wishes to label another as such, there's bloody nothing anyone can do about it, whether or not they're wearing a pair of slippers or holding a Barbie doll. If someone decides to be an a**hole and go around calling Persons all kinds of names because of who and what they are, then wearing a specially-tailored outfit, or wearing a specially-designed range of style is not going to change the cruelty of the a**hole.

 

I'd love to see the possibilities that fashion can do.

There's so, so much, I'm saying.

 

And I'd love to extend this possibility to the arena of make-up as well. Don't tell me that just because they've got unusual features means that there's not a single make-up technique in the whole world that can do anything to enhance their features. At least... I don't think the techniques are limited. I don't think that anyone- anyone- can not look pretty in this day and age where there's so experimentation and so much inclusion and so much friendship and sharing going on. We just have to redraw the  manual on the drawing board, maybe.

 

It will take time.

 

Oh sure, it will.

 

But as things go, better to have the time than to give it up and leave it to the wind altogether.

 

Because I hope, and I sincerely, sincerely hope, that the day will no longer be where I see a Person with Special Needs go for an excursion in a brassiere one size too small, straining against a buttoned-up faded white polo tee shirt hastily stuffed into a pair of cheap, flimsy checked brown elastic waistband bermudas.

And I hope that the day will no longer be where a Person with Special Needs be made a fool of on stage with the wrong cut of dress, the anyhow-put-together costume and garishly painted, poorly conceptualized make-up style.

It is not fair to them who have a chance to live.

And it is not fair to us as fellow human beings on this earth with our very special set of skills. :)