This season, the American-Chinese designer is inviting guests who are blind or have impaired vision to experience his collection through feeling swatches of fabric, while being on hand to help guests explore the garments verbally, ahead of his runway show at London Fashion Week.
“I’m a visual learner, in the sense that my fingers are my eyes,” explains braille tutor Jessikah Inaba, who is the UK’s first blind and black barrister, “so in order for me to fully grasp what the piece looks like, I need to be able to feel the fabric, to feel the stretch and to feel the patterns on the material.
“And for designers like Chet, it gives him such insight as to how people are ‘seeing’ his collection in ways that he otherwise may not recognise, because obviously when we’re touching things and feeling things, we’re having a completely different experience to those who sit by the catwalk and see a model whiz by.
Set up in 2019 by Anna Cofone, a hairstylist who has worked with the likes of Lana Del Rey and Margaret Qualley, and who grew up with a blind father, Hair & Care began working with activists, influencers and campaigners to encourage designers to make their collections more accessible.
“[Anna and I] spent an hour before Copenhagen Fashion Week putting these tactile markers on the runway,” she explains, “Anna was holding treats for Miss Molly [Lucy’s guide dog] to follow, navigating statues – you know, where there’s a will, there’s a way.”.
