Is fashionable asphyxiation the solution to help manage dementia?

France: Health and fashion professionals are warming to the idea that pressure on the neck can be used to manage dementia – a mind-numbingly boring disease that eats away the thinking process very close by in the head.

France’s leading care home provider Clariane has teamed up with luxury goods cartel LVMH to produce a garment that applies force around the neck – and shows unruly patients who is boss. “Applying the correct pressure when they go off on one is incredibly empowering,” said Pierre Dupont from Clariane. “It brings calm to the ward, helps them snap out of it and reminds them they are not fighting the Germans, or more recently, the Bosnians or Taliban.”

LVMH’s creative director, Pierre Escoffier, is excited about the partnership, and the prospect of reinterpreting what many in the fashion industry have termed a ‘scarf’ or ‘cravat’. “This is about looks first, no? But if we can do some good by combining fashion with science, this is also good, no?”

Yet Dr Pierre Houllebecq from public health agency Santé Publique France is not thrilled that the dementia clad are being used as guinea pigs, or even larger quadrupeds. “These are people, not hogs to be tied up before being consumed with hollandaise sauce. Would you like your parent to trussed up like a bear or a rather large infant?” he asks philosophically.