Brands are now taking the required efforts to demonstrate their inclusiveness.
In recent years, we’ve witnessed fashion businesses shift away from their traditional model – a slim white lady – and toward more diverse models to better reflect their clientele. While we have honored this, there are still categories of individuals that are neglected, one of which being persons with disabilities.
Victoria’s Secret recently featured their first Down syndrome model, and now another business is honoring a breakthrough with the introduction of their baby line.
Banana Republic’s current commercial features a baby boy with Down syndrome.
The brand stated in a statement that the Banana Republic BR Baby line, which was just introduced, was developed with the aim of being more sustainable, friendly, and accessible. They want to embrace diversity in all of its manifestations, and the casting for BR Baby provided us with an ideal opportunity to do so. They were overjoyed to offer this lovely, caring person his first modelling gig.
Katie Driscoll, the creator and president of Changing the Face of Beauty, said the group, which is dedicated to fair portrayal of disabled individuals in the media, was “overjoyed” that businesses were communicating to the handicapped community through their advertisements.
Thank you @bananarepublic for #changingthefaceofbeauty
Posted by Changing the Face of Beauty on Saturday, 5 March 2022
When it comes to diversity, our community is sometimes disregarded; nonetheless, the disability community is the world’s biggest minority, and one in every five households knows or loves somebody with a disability. Being recognised in our world is critical to our future.
Let’s hope that one day this becomes the standard, so that when a brand incorporates somebody with a handicap, it is no longer something to be celebrated, but rather something to be expected.
