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A group of blind or visually impaired people is not only modeled on the runway at a fashion show on August 7 in Chicago, but also the designs that they wear.
The event is organized by the Beautiful Lives Project, a non -profit organization that offers people with disabilities to take part in activities and events that may not be available to them due to their physical or facility challenges. Around 100 guests are expected at the Evening event, which takes place in the CD Peacock Mansion in the Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook.
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Around 6 million Americans have a loss of vision and 1 million blindness, according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention Shae and Eye Health Monitoring. While legally blind people such as Amanda Swafford, the candidate of the “America’s Next Top Model”, and fashion designer Natalie Travon attracted attention, fashion shows with visually impaired models were scarce. In 2016 the first national blind fashion show took place during the New York Fashion Week.
Bryce Weller, co -founder of The Beautiful Lives Project, said he wanted to make a fashion show to demonstrate that “people with disabilities can do what they do in their lives and that there are different ways to experience fashion”.
While some clothes, runways or digitally watch fashion, they experience visually impaired or blind people with their touch. The 10 participants who are legally blind will visit a Nordstrom shop to choose the designs that you will wear on the show. The texture of different clothing styles, be it their smoothness, roughness or different fabrics, affects the tactile approach of the models for self -styles. While some will use their partial vision for these decisions, others are only dependent on touch. Before you meet the catwalk, you will visit Hammer & Nails to have designed your hair.
After fashion sports, art, cheerleading and other activities for Beautiful Lives project events arranged, he was always something that he wanted to give the participants the opportunity to experience. He added: “I am passionate about creating support for the support of community support for people who are too often forgotten.”
The show next month will also forward to the guests that “there are different ways to experience fashion for all. But everyone can come together to help people who are visually impaired or blind to be successful in life,” he said.
CD Peacock, a two-story, 21,000 square meter luxury watch and jewelry shop, is busy with various charity organizations, but it was a customer that presented the deputy chairman Steven Holtzman and his 16-year-old daughter Aria in the non-profit organization. Later they planned to visit the Illinois Center for Rehabilitation and Education Wood, a facility that offers programs for blind, visually impaired or deaf people who are 18 years or older. After Holtzman picked up 10 pizzas into his cafeteria to talk to people about the view of a fashion show. The CD Peacock Manager said that he had goosebumps all the time because they are interested in trying out something else and dealing with the project.
While the idea for the show partly came up with his daughter, who was looking for something this summer, Holtzman hopes that it will develop into a “Pay IT Forward” situation and refers to the feature film from 2000 with Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment and Jay Mohr. His daughter is committed to the show at CD Peacock, which offers Rolex, Omega, Chanel and other concepts. “It’s like a confectionery shop for people who like watches and jewelry,” he said.
When he pointed out that his daughter visited a boarding school that has 150 clubs for students, he said that they had brainstorming about how students could start a wonderful life project to introduce participants in university sports, college concerts or other events, for which they may not have been inaugurated.
Weller, who took part in Icre-Wood to learn life skills, said: “People sometimes feel nervous to allow people with disabilities to live their dreams. Even a great struggle for many people who are blindly or visually impaired is to find employment. Often people do not believe that someone can be successful in the life-in work regardless of their work.”
The aim is to make the CD Peacock fashion show an annual moving and possibly make fashion show in other cities in order to give others the opportunity to experience others with different disabilities, said Weller. The fashion show will give a donation component to try to support Beautiful Lives project events in other parts of the country.
Above all, he expects the event to show guests who take part in the event, “that everyone experiences the world differently, whether this fashion is, try to find employment or to be successful in life. We hope that everyone understands that everyone has their own unique opportunities to experience fashion or to live their dreams.
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