Accessibility Hushing and Fashion Week Diversity
Not excited about mainstream events like Fashion Week, Berlinale or Gallery Weekend? Discover exciting side events! In my blog: what's accessibility hushing?
I usually don't care much about big mainstream trends and events like Berlin Fashion Week or Gallery Weekend, but both are accompanied with more interesting and diverse side events. When I started researching ideas for a blog post about fashion, creativity and clichés, the apparent prejudice against adaptive fashion and assistive technology made me write a blog post about wearing hearing aids instead.
Accessible Accessories
Why is everybody always wearing headphones? Take a closer look and try to tell which ones are actually hearing aids. Adaptive fashion overcomes stereotypical product design and challenges outdated patterns of perception.
Image: modern hearing aid worn as fashion accessory at a music event.
Accessibility Hushing
What is accessibility hushing? Why do people hush accessibility issues? I wasn’t even aware of the expression. But invisble clichés in our society are real. I might have got glasses and hearing aids much earlier in my life otherwise and I could have heard many more birds singing. Why we (as a society) tend to celebrate headphones but hush hearing aids is my anecdotal take on a serious topic.
Adaptive Fashion, Bespoke Clothing, and Real-Life Encounters
Adaptive fashion is the silent success story nobody was talking about or so I thought until I found out at the VORN Fashion showcase during last years Berlin Fashion Week. Diversity might sound like just another buzzword or marketing tokenism, but it actually means opening up to people and their needs and creativity instead of repeating is established clichés over and over faster and faster every year. Many people are so over fast fashion already for various reasons. The revival of traditional handmade authenticity in times of AI and automation is no coincidence. Tailoring bespoke suits or knitting at home for your family brings back the value that the fast fashion industry threw out of the window. Luckily the times are changing and new events are connecting people in real life to showcase and exchange ideas and to celebrate together.
Diverse Redefinition of a Fashion Events
How diverse are Berlin Fashion Week designers? After downsizing its former mainstream glamour, Berlin Fashion week had to reinvent its concept. These days, the “fashion week” doesn’t even last for a whole week anymore, but downsizing had advantages as well. Now creative independent fashion designers, diversity, and sustainable innovators have become increasingly important.
I was inspired by several inspiring public events again, after attended a packed Black in Fashion event last year. Berlin Fashion Week 2026 included independent shows like EYEBOLLËY030 RE-CREATE and knit to change showcasing sustainable knitwear made by Ukrainian refugees, both at Studio db, a polymorph creative infrastructure for local artists in Berlin that turns its showroom into a club-like dancefloor after the show. And there was the Denim Repair Deal event at Kleiderei, a fashion library that lets you borrow clothing, also featuring a denim artwork by Berlin-based artist Sophia Muriel.
Creative Events in 2026
Carnival is not a universal tradition and it's celebrated differently in different places, with somber white masks in Venice, dancing in Brasil and often involving fancy dressing. I'm not that big fan of Carnival, but I like when people celebrate together espeically for free outside in the streets despite cold and bad weather. I also like fancy dressing which is why I revived the idea of motto partys without mandatory custumes. Please who don’t like fancy dressing can bring an accessory or tell a story. Still a crative challenge!
What else is coming in our creative calendar later in 2026 in Berlin and elsewhere? No carnival except for the little kids, but Berlin Fashion Week in late January / beginning of February 2026, Berlinale Film festival, and - much later - gallery weekend and sellery weekend, its infamous and more diverse independent companion.