Tu Es Canon – Symposium on Inclus­ive Fash­ion

Through present­a­tions and discus­sions with the audi­ence, the symposium addressed the issue of the parti­cip­a­tion of people with special needs in indus­trial design and fash­ion train­ing, with a view to making art schools more inclus­ive.

Launched in 2020, Tu Es Canon is ASA-Handi­cap mental’s programme on inclus­ive fash­ion. Since then, the asso­ci­ation has organ­ised two symposi­ums and a work­shop, created the tu-es-canon.ch blog, and published the first Inclus­ive Fash­ion Mani­festo, writ­ten by people with and without disab­il­it­ies.

This third symposium, organ­ised in part­ner­ship with mudac, also presen­ted the book Tu Es Canon – Mani­feste de la Mode Inclus­ive, by Elisa Fulco and Teresa Maranzo (ASA-Handi­cap mental 2022) and focused on article 6 of the Mani­festo:

“The experts have their say. The signat­or­ies want their opin­ions and expert­ise to be taken into account by styl­ists, design­ers, dress­makers, and the entire fash­ion produc­tion and distri­bu­tion chain, so that clothes and accessor­ies are suit­able for as many people as possible”.

Inclus­ive fash­ion is for every­one, for a genu­ine revolu­tion in the canons of beauty. Fash­ion has the power to make every­one beau­ti­ful (“canon” is a collo­quial French word that means “stun­ning”), whatever their morpho­logy or phys­ical or cognit­ive limit­a­tions.
With this in mind, the day-long symposium was also an oppor­tun­ity to discover projects created by ECAL Indus­trial Bach­el­or’s students as part of the “Inclus­ive Soft Goods Hard­ware” course.