SHOW NOTES
Seeing Within is hosted by Dawn Blezard, a Jivamukti-trained yoga teacher living with Stargardt’s disease - a progressive condition that is gradually taking her sight. Each episode, Dawn talks with guests who are navigating life, identity, and the world at the edges of what they can see.
In this episode, Dawn meets Bérénice Magistretti - writer, visually impaired activist, and co-founder of Visible Voices, a platform shifting the narrative on disability through the lens of fashion, beauty, art and design.
Bérénice was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at 19. Over the past twenty years, her sight has gradually diminished - first in low light, then with increasing blind spots throughout the day. Three years ago, she began using a white cane. Unable to find one that reflected who she was, she designed her own - working with artisans in Tuscany to create a cane that is now touring international museums and forming the basis of an upcoming collection.
Her work has been featured in British Vogue, Vogue Italia, and AD Italia. She has given a TEDx Talk and has appeared on France Inter. Her co-founder, Ruben, is autistic and narcoleptic — and together they are building Visible Voices into a global platform that tells different stories about disability, through a different lens.
In this conversation, Bérénice and Dawn explore:
* The emotional transition of making an invisible disability visible
* Why the world of fashion has been slow to include disabled people — and why that is beginning to change
* The work of Hair and Care, a London nonprofit helping low-vision and blind women to feel and look beautiful
* How Making Fashion Accessible is opening up London Fashion Week to the blind and low-vision community — with live audio description, tactile sample books, and direct access to designers
* The anxiety, grief, and identity questions that come with progressive sight loss
* Why sharing is not the same as complaining
You look with your two eyes, but you see with your third eye.
Find Bérénice on Instagram: @berenice.magistretti Visible Voices: @visible_voices_ TEDx Talk: youtu.be/7jB6rdUfWIE
This is not a podcast to rush through. There is no right way to listen. Produced by Anne Gould. Music via Epidemic Sound. With thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production. To hear more, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com.
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