Ben Barry

As a fashion educator, researcher and activist, I strive to intervene into the fashion system and redesign it to centre inclusion and decolonization – creating a future in which bodies that are currently stigmatized and excluded are instead valued and desired. As a teacher and supervisor, I work with students to confront, resist and transform the fashion system’s narrow ideas and ideals about the body as well as the hierarchical and exclusionary fashion design process. My research program centres the intersectional experiences of disabled, fat, trans, queer and gender nonconforming people and collaborates with them to co-design clothing and media. I also serve as co-Editor of Fashion Studies (with Alison Matthews David) and Director of the The Creative School Centre for Fashion Diversity & Social Change. Before becoming faculty, I started the first inclusive modeling agency in the world; for this work, I was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Person’s Case for advancing gender equality in Canada.

When I was appointed Chair of the Toronto Met Fashion, The Toronto Star profiled me in a feature: “New Chair of Toronto Met Fashion School Changing the World by Changing Culture.” (external link)