Touch, sound and style: London fashion week opens to visually impaired guests

“If you put your hands out and run your fingers along this skirt, you’ll feel that there are soft feathers appliquéd on to it,” says the fashion designer Chet Lo. The group stands huddled around Lo as he talks them through each piece, pausing to pass around everything from jackets featuring spiky back panels to clingy knitted dresses.

The opportunity to feel each piece is crucial for the guests: each person has low vision or is blind. This “touch tour” has been organised by Making Fashion Accessible, an initiative from the non-profit Hair & Care founded by the celebrity hairstylist Anna Cofone in 2019, which aims to foster more inclusivity in the fashion and beauty industries.

After the tour, guests sit front row at Lo’s show and are given headphones that play audio descriptions of each look alongside a booklet featuring samples of the fabrics. “I am fully blind so I got so much out of it,” says Jane Manley.

United Kingdom, London

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