Paralympic Games athletes on the runway of the Amputee Venus Show
Japanese Paralympic athlete Kaede Maegawa on the runway of the "Amputee Venus Show" (screenshot of a video published by the Japanese media Kyodo News, on August 25, 2020 - © Kyodo News)
The press agency AP reports, today, that despite the postponement of the Paralympic Games due to Coronavirus, their inauguration fashion show, featuring models with prosthetic legs, took place yesterday, in Japan.
By Ludmilla Intravaia
The Olympic and Paralympic Games may have been postponed for a year, due to the Covid-19 crisis but the fashion show that was to inaugurate, on August 25th, the opening of these competitions bringing together athletes with disabilities was not canceled. The “Amputee Venus Show” 「切断 ヴ ィ ー ス 」was therefore held yesterday in the presence of a dozen models wearing prosthetic legs, reports the news agency Associated Press today. Among those Paralympic athletes was japanese sportswoman Kaede Maegawa, who finished fourth in the long jump in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics. Watch the show below.
Last February, in New York, the American brand Chromat collaborated with Paralympic champion Femita Ayanbeku, wearing a prosthetic leg, for his runway show (more info here). Already in 1998, American disabled athlete Aimee Mullins walked the catwalk of the British designer Alexander McQueen's N°13 Spring/Summer 1999 show, in London, in a pair of hand-carved ash prostheses (more info here).
Savage X Fenty by Rihanna, Lulu et Gigi Couture (more info here)…, fashion brands are now taking the opportunity of the catwalks to highlight their positive body vision of fashion, by welcoming models from all ages, origins, morphologies and handicaps, in particular amputee models, wearing prostheses. Note, moreover, that prostheses and exoskeletons in fashion are at the heart of Le Boudoir Numérique interview of this week with the journalist specialized in new technologies, Olivier Levard (read here).
* Continue reading on this topic with the following Boudoir Numérique papers :
- Parted or inclusive beauty sublimated by projection mapping
- "Isn't the fashion of the future the one that changes our bodies?"
- NYFW 20-21 : Daisy-May Demetre walks Lulu et Gigi Couture sho
- NYFW 20-21 : Daisy-May Demetre walks Lulu et Gigi Couture show with prostheses
- NYFW 20-21 : inclusive fashion tech at Chromat show