Ben Barry

My mission is to use fashion to foster inclusion, community and equity. I strive to help design a fashion system and society in which all bodies are seen as valuable and desirable. In my classes and supervisions, I work with students to uncover, confront and transform how fashion establishes ideals and consequently marginalizes, stigmatizes and excludes particular bodies. My own research uncovers the experiences of people—especially of individuals who are marginalized due to disability, race, gender identity and other axes of identity—when engaging with fashion images and clothing in everyday life in order to uncover how fashion can challenge and transform inequities. Before I started at Ryerson, I founded the first modeling agency in the world dedicated to promoting models of all bodies, ages and abilities.

Recent publications:

Barry, B. (2018). Enclothed Knowledge: The Fashion Show as a Method of Dissemination in Arts-Informed Research. Fashion Studies, 1(1), 1–43.

Barry, B., & Drak, D. (2019). Intersectional Interventions into Queer and Trans Liberation: Youth Resistance Against Right-Wing Populism Through Fashion Hacking. Fashion Theory, 23(6), 679–709.

Barry, B., Evans, C., & Friedman, M. (n.d.). Fattening fabulousness: The joys and risks of troubling gender through fat fashion. Fat Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–17.

Matthews David, A., Barry, B., & Ryerson University. Faculty of Communication and Design. (n.d.). Fashion studies. Fashion Studies, Journal, Electronic.

Reilly, A. H., & Barry, B. (2020). Crossing gender boundaries: Fashion to create, disrupt and transcend. Intellect.  

Sample of supervised ComCult projects:

2017 - Riley Kucheran; Thesis: Maadaadizi (To Start A Journey): Strategies For Indigenous Luxury Fashion Designers

 Starting in Fall 2021, Dr. Barry will be serving as Dean of the School of Fashion at The New School’s Parsons School of Design. He is not currently reviewing files or accepting new students.