Smart jewels for inclusive fashion

The fashion industry has long neglected disability. However, the recent emphasis on inclusion, diversity and sustainability opens new scenarios for fashion that has a unique opportunity to cast disability in new, creative and more ethical terms. In this paper, we reflect on the troublesome relation between fashion and disability, and the stigmatisation and erasure of people with a disability from the fashion discourse. We focus on the design of medical accessories that is dominated by a medical model of disability that neglects the hedonic aspects of people’s experience in accessorising the body. Most of the medical aids for physical or perceptual impairment seem not worthy for fashion consideration. The paper reflects on the design of hearing aids and describes the case study of smart jewels that recognise and notify deaf people of surrounding sounds. The jewels are designed as fashion accessories and “objects of desire” rather than as devices to compensate for an impairment.