Primark brings a mannequin in a wheelchair to his stores of his stores, designed together with the presenter and activist Sophie Morgan, in the wheelchair since he was 18 years old. After a first launch in 22 stores in nine countries, including that of via Torino in Milan, “Sophie“, This is the name of the mannequin, it will be an integral part of the preparation of the windows dedicated to the line Adaptive, The men’s fashion-woman fashion designed precisely for people with disabilities.
But, it will be, Primark for us rhymes with Fast Fashion (and all the cucuzzaro of good intentions).
In fact, the choice to adopt Sophie is part of a wider project than the low cost fashion giant to make her shops more inclusive and “Promote – he writes – diversity and make clothing accessible to a larger group of people“.
The creation of the mannequin took over a year of work from the Primark Visual Merchandising team, in close collaboration with Sophie Morgan. Particular attention would have been paid to the posture of the mannequin, designed to authenticly represent a person who uses a manual wheelchair. Also designed a chair ad hocresistant and integrated in the overall design of the mannequin.
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Inclusiveness or greenwashing? The unsolved knot of the Fast Fashion
All wow! A significant initiative from a symbolic point of view, certainly, and commendable from a communicative point of view, but we cannot ignore that we are talking about Primark, which is one of the major representatives of global fast fashion.
Primark, and the whole sector in general, are based on an intensive and low cost production, with enormous environmental and social impacts: exploitation of workers and labor, massive production of textile waste, excessive use of natural resources.
In this context, even an appreciable campaign like that of the “Sophie” mannequin risks becoming a Greenwashing operation or “diversity-washing“: A way to clean up the image of the brand and divert attention from its unparalleled practices. Promoting inclusion should not be an alibi to ignore the environmental and social contradictions that remain at the base of the economic model of Fast Fashion.
The representation is fine, therefore, but without forgetting Who proposes it and Why.
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