Speaker 1 00:04
With information on the latest developments in assistive technology and initiatives from the studios of two RPH in Sydney. RPH Australia brings you Ablequest.
Speaker 2 00:23
Hello, I'm Barbara Sullivan. Today's guest is Nikki Hind, Australia's first legally blind fashion designer and the subject of a children's book with Braille alongside text. Nikki Hind, dressed for Success is the third book in a series featuring inspirational Australians living with blindness and low vision. Nikki's story is about an australian fashion designer who uses her imagination to dream up beautiful clothing designs. Her label is called Blind Grit, a fashion brand built entirely of and around those who live with disability. Elaine Johntech asked Nikki about her resolve to reach her dreams despite her disability. They also talked about the book and her delight about it being read in an upcoming episode of the ABC's play School.
Speaker 3 01:13
Welcome to the program, Nikki. You are Australia's first legally blind fashion designer and the subject of a children's book, Nikki Hyundai dressed for success. How did that happen?
Speaker 4 01:24
The books are amazing. There are three of them and they have been done in conjunction with Vision Australia. They are the brainchild of the fabulous vilgana, who is head of the library at Vision Australia. They're actually the very first books in Australia in Braille and standard print that are available retail. So until these books were created, if you or your child wanted a book in Braille, you could not just pop online and order it or pop into a library or a bookstore. Incredible. I myself don't read Braille, but I just presumed that they would be readily available. And they're not. These were first in Australia. They're aimed at probably up to six year olds, maybe three to six. They're beautiful picture books and the idea is big vision. So the idea is to get children with low vision vision impairment to think big and think outside the box about what they can do when they grow up, essentially. So they've chosen three vision impaired Australians who are doing cool things. One is the fabulous blind chef in Sydney, the other is the blind surfer up in Queensland. And I am unbelievably honoured to be the third.
Speaker 3 02:45
So, as a young child with low vision, and I understand you enjoyed sketching designs and making your own clothes and dressing up, that would have been a wonderful book for you when you were little.
Speaker 4 02:55
Well, I would have loved that. However, I was born blind in one eye, but I wasn't declared legally blind until much later in life. So that happened when I was pregnant with my first child. So although I was one of those kids who had the patch over one eye, little glasses, trying to strengthen the bad eye. I was born with one eye that was pretty much perfect 2020 vision, and the other eye, which was either extremely long sighted or extremely short sighted, I can never, ever remember. And they covered one eye and said, what can you read? And I could read everything, covered the other one and said, what can you read? And I said, God, I can not even sure where the board is now.
Speaker 3 03:37
How old were you?
Speaker 4 03:38
I was not quite six. Oh, I see. I was in primary school, and that's when they put the patch on the good eye to get the weak eye to kind of try harder and pull itself back in line. So I had that patch on my eye for a year and the big hoke bottle glasses, and I could not see a thing. I walked into the side of a horse. I used to walk into playground equipment, so they just kind of sat me up the front of the class and hoped for the best, but I couldn't see a thing.
Speaker 3 04:06
So I understand you had a stroke in your first pregnancy. So how did that affect your eye health?
Speaker 4 04:11
That's what wiped out the amount of vision to leave me legally blind. So, yeah, with my first born, Darcy, who's now 18. When I was pregnant with Darcy, I had a stroke which wiped out the area that processes the outside half of my field of vision.
Speaker 3 04:31
So you have no peripheral vision at all?
Speaker 4 04:34
Correct. So I can see out of the inside half of my right eye.
Speaker 3 04:39
Now, why did you turn to fashion, then, when you had poor eyesight? Or you have to look straight ahead when you're looking at the material, at the colours and the style?
Speaker 4 04:49
Yeah, it's interesting what your brain feels in, but when I'm trying to get a hold of something purely visually, not kind of utilising my memory and my brain, which your body just does naturally, a lot, it's amazing how your brain feels in what you don't really see. But when I'm trying to get a hold of things, I need it directly in front of me and at a certain distance. I mean, certainly when I was young, like an awful lot of kids, I loved dress ups, but I think I liked dress ups more than most. And I loved the psychology of dress ups. I guess that you could take on all these different characters with the different things that you wore. I absolutely loved it and used to dress up with my older sister and do concerts all the time. And then, as a young teenager, I'd have to say I probably still more loved dressing up than the concept of fashion, really. It was. If I wanted the clothes in the shops were not quite right. I thought, I like that colour, but I'd like it to be like this. And it was very much about a particular Persona or character that I felt I wanted to appear like when I went to the school socials or certain events. So I did not know how to sew. I didn't have a sewing machine and I would just cut things out and hand sew them and staple them and it would be the. I think everybody has a happy place they go to in their daydreams. And that for me was fashion design. I'd be forever daydreaming up designs. It seemed like such a not practical thing to do.
Speaker 3 06:28
Why did you turn to fashion? Were you not happy in the career that you had before or you just thought you'd do something really difficult and do it well?
Speaker 4 06:35
Yeah, no, I was very happy in the career I had. I was doing public relations and corporate event management, mostly for non for profits, Red Cross blood service and Australian Red Cross. I absolutely loved it. And when I did lose my vision, and of course this was now 18 years ago, so things definitely have changed a little. Still nowhere near as much as they need to change. But certainly I was told very clearly and from people who were well meaning. The first person who told me I would never work again was the psychologist from Guide Dogs Australia, who came out to assist with the sudden legal blindness that I had to really lower my expectations and that I would almost definitely never work again. But I could probably get some interesting volunteer work so as I could still feel engaged with society. And I was early thirty s and a new mum, and that was a terrifying thing to hear. I loved work very much. Feels like we're a society that highly values what your job is and how you work feels like who you are. So now I loved what I did and when Darcy was about two, I thought, I'm just going to see if I can get back into the role. I had even part time or casual, with Australian Red Cross and they said that they weren't equipped for someone with vision impairment and I would apply for other public relations and event management positions. And I looked good on paper because I had the qualifications and the experience and I interviewed well because I loved what I did.
Speaker 3 08:16
So you did what a lot of women do is start your own business. Or did you go to Tafe first to learn the skills?
Speaker 4 08:23
After having my second child, my marriage broke down and it was really quite a traumatic separation, as many of them are, and I found myself in a situation where I was completely financially ruined. The boys and I had nothing. I had these two beautiful little boys. Corey was just a baby. He wasn't even one. And Darcy was about three and a half. I found myself this legally blind sole parent with no job and no money and very, very limited social supports. And it was crushing. It was awful. It was really overwhelming. And the only thing worse than being in that dark place where you wake up in a panic and go to sleep fearing tomorrow is to be there with your beautiful children, I guess I was just determined to have independence and lightness and joy. And I guess what I did was I reached for a dream.
Speaker 3 09:27
So your dream was your own fashion label, wasn't it?
Speaker 4 09:30
Yeah, my dream was my own fashion label. I was wanting to role model to my boys all the things that I wanted for them, and that was feeling confident and positive and pursuing your dreams.
Speaker 3 09:44
So can you tell us about your label called blind grit?
Speaker 4 09:47
Yes, it's called blind grit. And when I first started, when I put forward my first fashion collection, I actually did it for a competition. I did it for the pre Demera Claire awards, because I wasn't necessarily thinking, I will start a fashion label then. I just wanted to see, I just really wanted to create fashion. Marie Claire, who are a wonderful australian magazine, nothing came of that because the collection was certainly not retail ready. It was samples for a competition. But it made me think, well, maybe I can do this, maybe I can be a fashion designer. And if I'm going to be one, what do I want that to look like? And where do I sit in the fashion landscape? So I started looking for my fellow blind fashion designers in Australia and there weren't any. When I looked further afield, there were only a small handful. There are four at the time, I think internationally. And that got me thinking, wow, where is disability in fashion? Why are there no blind fashion designers? Why are there none in Australia? And so that's how I first got in contact with vision Australia to say, I'm legally blind and I'm wanting to start my own fashion label. Could you help me? Could you please put me in touch with my fellow blind fashion designers?
Speaker 3 11:04
So your designs, are they designed for people with disabilities or they just. Do you have themes in your range?
Speaker 4 11:11
Yeah, I do have themes. And no, they're not designed for people with disability, but the entire label, blind Greek. Because as I tried to think what will feel like success, to me, it wasn't just necessarily bringing more clothes to the world. I wanted to looking into where disability sat in the fashion industry and realising pretty much nowhere at the time, there were a tiny, tiny amount of some models, but certainly nobody making any of the decisions behind the scenes. Barely anybody actually creating the fashion disability was very much missing from that. And then I decided to set blind grit up as almost a rebranding of disability. I wanted it to be there as desirable, I wanted it to be there as valuable. Blind grit has been built entirely often around those who live with disabilities. So right from the start, I wanted all the dream jobs because that's what lifted me out of a very scary, heavy, dark place. There are lots of dream jobs in fashion and I wanted all of those to be done and all of the decisions to be made by those who have lived experience of disability.
Speaker 3 12:25
So I understand that everybody who works on blind grit, from the photographers and the graphic designers, makeup artists, they're all people who live with disability or they've survived some sort of trauma, then?
Speaker 4 12:37
That's right, because I do certainly consider post traumatic stress and other mental illnesses as they tend to be invisible disabilities. They are absolutely social disabilities and get in the way of standard employment.
Speaker 3 12:50
So where can we find more about your book, more about your label?
Speaker 4 12:54
You can find more about my label@blindgrit.com. Got to hurry up and get the new collection up there. So I created a new mini collection for the launch of the Vision Australia book. And so I'm going to do a mini collection from all our favourite places that we travelled to. And the very first one that I created for the book launch is Brighton beach. So beautiful, iconic Brighton beach over in the UK. And the book, the series of books, all three of the books are available at all good bookstores. They are being placed in every library in Australia. They will be in all primary school libraries across Australia. All three books are going to be part of australian primary school curriculum and they're being read on play school, which is even more exciting.
Speaker 3 13:42
Very exciting.
Speaker 4 13:43
I know. I don't know if Big Ted's going to read it, but he'll certainly be listening. And you can, of course, go online at Vision Australia and purchase them as well. And I believe there's a special pre Christmas pack of all three of them, too.
Speaker 3 13:58
And that was Nikki Hind, Australia's first legally blind fashion designer and the subject of a children's book called Nikki Hind, dressed for success.
Speaker 1 14:13
You have just been listening to Ablequest, a program that looks at developments in assistive technology and initiatives from Elaine Wzionteck and Barbara Sullivan. Thank you for listening and goodbye till next program.
