Purple Tuesday

The Fashion Industry and the Purple Pound

Today is Purple Tuesday which is recognised globally as an opportunity to raise awareness about the customer experience for people with disabilities. Celebrated annually on the first Tuesday of November, Purple Tuesday highlights the need for greater inclusion and accessibility. In Hull where I live, the Minster and other buildings will have been illuminated in purple from around 4 pm. Below, I take a look at the fashion industry through the (purple) lens of the disabled customer.

Estimated to be around £274 billion annually in the UK alone, the ‘purple pound’ is the combined spending potential of disabled people and their households. In this article, I share the experiences of Beth and June, two stylish women I’ve met through Instagram, admiring their colourful, individual and sustainable styling - look out for links to their Instagram accounts below.

Progress

Beth acknowledges that “the fashion industry has made some progress this year,” referring for example to the introduction of more seated mannequins which shows how clothes could look for someone in a wheelchair. Accessible counters, adaptive clothing ranges and sensory-friendly hours for the neurodivergent are also slowly increasing.   

Accessibility

A brand has its policies in place. It has its accessible counters. It has its accessible changing rooms. It uses disabled models and seated mannequins in its shops. It’s ticked its mandatory boxes. But what happens on the ground can be a different story.  Beth and June both talk about merchandise in the aisles and ‘accessible’ changing rooms used for storage. As Beth points out,  “Especially during sale times when lots of stock is put in place, sometimes I cannot even fit between the rails with my wheelchair.” June goes on to say, “But not just the aisles. I’d say to them stop blocking my access to tills by stacking boxes of merchandise close to the tills/counters and card readers - they’re the bane of my life when I’m shopping!” The message is clear: “make your damn shops actually accessible."

Brands: Beth & June's picks

Snag Tights has a broad size range, catering up to side 32, and uses disabled models and models that represent all of their sizes.

Sustainability champion Lucy & Yak features disabled models and some plus sizes and are gender-incluisve. Known for its affinity with disabled and neurodivergent communities, every Tuesday is ‘purple’, with quieter shopping times and other adaptations.

Primark has many policies and practices to attract the purple pound, with accessible counters, changing rooms and a collaboration with Unhidden for its adaptive clothing range. In practice, as June points out, it needs to remember to keep its aisles and changing rooms clear for those with disabilities.

Molke is a UK brand which June recommends for their ethical, comfortable, non-wired underwear and swimwear, showing the importance of inclusivity at the clothing-design stage.

Inclusion and Sustainability

As Samantha Bullock wrote in an article for Fashion Revolution, “sustainability isn’t only about being green or eco; it also involves… society and its needs.’ When clothing is designed to be worn for longer, more comfortably, for all bodies, it’s making a greater contribution towards sustainability. Beth and June are both vintage-clothing shoppers - from 'kilo' sales to online - loving its greater affordability and opportunities for creating a more personalised look.

Final messages

So what would their messages to the fashion industry be? One thing from June would be brands featuring a wider range of disabled people: ambulatory and wheelchair users but also, as she points out, powerchair users like herself who are rarely represented. Staff training to eliminate infantilisation of the disabled is also needed. She cites the example of staff taking her card from her to pay: ‘It’s infantilising to have to have someone else conduct the task for me!”

Beth, meanwhile, told me that she’d love to see footwear brands designing shoes with swollen feet in mind. And her final message?: “Disabled people can be fashionable too!”

Being truly inclusive won’t just improve the experience of a minority: it will improve the experience for all. The day you’ve a splitting headache, the day you’ve left your reading glasses at home, the day you’re bloated and you curse the designer, the day you’ve got the grandchildren in tow… We all benefit from inclusivity and accessibility. And surely we don’t just want disabled mannequins in our shops: we want confident, happy, disabled customers in our shops.

You can follow June and Beth's stylish accounts on Instagram and join in with June's #everythinglooksbetterwithabag. 

This shot blog post is taken from my free weekly transformEd style magazine. You can subscribe via the link below.

Sign up here

Click here to take a look at my other blog posts.