This month’s British Vogue cover features prominent people with disabilities. It is intended as a reminder of the importance of visibility and representation in fashion, especially for marginalized groups or minorities. British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful himself lives with an invisible disability, he told the newspaper in an interview Guardians revealed: “I’ve had five retinal detachments, am partially blind and have less than 50 percent hearing – I now wear hearing aids.”
The cover of Vogue attempts to explore the healing powers of fashion: people living with disabilities find themselves on the cover of fashion’s number one magazine after a lifetime of feeling unseen by the luxury industry. But it’s seldom talked about that for decades, fashion was a gatekeeper that allowed only a very narrow definition of beauty and normality.
“The Game Changer pants are the most important work I’ve ever done,” says Toronto-based Izzy Camilleri. She is the founder of IZ Adaptive, one of the world’s first adaptive clothing lines. The world seems to agree with her because her designs can even save lives. For this, Camilleri received two awards in 2022 for her adaptive line, founded in 2009: the Innovation Award at the Women’s Empowerment Awards and the Fashion Impact Award at the Canadian Art & Fashion Awards.
Camilleri has dressed the likes of Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie and David Bowie, but when people with disabilities asked for seamless pants, she was at a loss. “I didn’t really understand what’s so bad about it,” she tells FashionUnited. “I thought that this seam was an essential part of pants design because it separates the right and left sides and its curves shape the buttocks.” Camilleri was merely repeating an industry standard that is also the basis of all fashion education. It was therefore impossible to design a pair of well-fitting trousers without a seam at the crotch.Fashion students who forgot this seam in their technical sketches got a bad grade for negligence.
Rethinking designs for the adaptive market
However, for people who rely on a wheelchair to get around in the world, the suture can cause pressure sores when it presses on the spine for hours. Over a long period of time, this can penetrate the skin and take up to a year for such a wound to heal. In some cases, people have to lie on their stomach for three months to recover. In the worst case, it can lead to a deadly blood infection, like the one that killed Superman actor Christopher Reeve. And all because of the placement of a seam.
“It’s common, it’s debilitating, and for the longest time I thought there was nothing I could do,” says Camilleri. “Then, during the first lockdown, when there was so little going on, I wondered if I couldn’t solve the problem. I called these pants the game changer because that’s what they are.”
IZ’s patent-pending Seamless Technology includes a fitted cut with a classic front and extra length at the back to avoid slipping. On some models, the seams are optically reproduced in places where seams are otherwise visible, in order to imitate the look of conventional jeans. Pockets on the front have been re-stitched as even bulky fabric can lead to wounds. The technology has been used in men’s and women’s sweatshirts, chinos, leggings and yoga pants.
Adaptive fashion, an exciting design challenge for creatives
There are so many considerations that go into the development of adaptive fashion that it really is an exciting opportunity for designers and pattern makers who enjoy a challenge. A person with walking disabilities may start the day with a waist of 30 inches (about 76 centimeters), but by the end of the day it can be 32 inches (about 81 centimeters) because the organs sag with prolonged sitting. A rubber band counteracts this.
Camilleri pioneered adaptive design when it wasn’t widely discussed. “I was alone most of the time,” she says. She now licenses her technology to other brands and works closely with Runway of Dreams, Gamut Management and most importantly people with disabilities. Her first foray into adaptive fashion was in 2004 when she was customizing for a client who used a wheelchair and learned of the challenges she was facing. Statistics in Canada at the time showed that 84 percent of people who break their spines are between the ages of 18 and 34 and are injured either in car accidents or while playing sports. The remaining 16 percent was caused by falls in the elderly. The staggering mismatch between supply and demand prompted Camilleri to transition her business to designs for people with disabilities, specializing in clothing for wheelchair users.
“There were only offers for older people, but nothing for young accident victims who want to rebuild their lives and maybe work again,” she says. “When you’re a goth, you remain the same person you were before the accident, and imagine that lack of opportunity takes that away from you.”
IZ offers elegant garments with hidden innovations that are not always visible to the naked eye, and that is exactly what Camilleri intends to do. Traditionally styled coats can pose a problem for people in wheelchairs or for those who cannot stand up to align the hem underneath them. “Many wheelchair users wear short bomber coats for this reason, to avoid sitting on a bulge of fabric,” says Camilleri. “But in the Canadian cold, your lap freezes and you don’t move your legs, so it takes a long time for your body to find the energy to warm up.” Fitting models in wheelchairs is critical to developing prototypes. The IZ coats follow the line of a seated person, with the back reaching to the seat of the chair, while the front falls above the knee, allowing the coat to be put on without having to stand up.
Victoria Jenkins, clothing technologist and founder of brand Unhidden, whose runway show caused a stir during London Fashion Week in February, has had multiple surgeries for gastrointestinal problems. She founded her brand to offer inclusive and adaptable clothing for people with disabilities, such as adapted trousers for wheelchair users: inside with vertical pockets to keep contents in place and an elastic waistband that is not restrictive or painful for seated people. There are also shirts with openings for stomas or feeding tubes and arm openings for patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Clothing designed without these considerations “can compromise dignity,” says Jenkins. “The ability to run hoses through the openings is more convenient and less risky.”
Slippery fabrics can be dangerous for wheelchair users and some people with certain skin conditions can only wear natural fibers. If a person has trouble raising their arms to get into the sleeves, detachable sleeves are helpful, and capes have proven to be desirable, says Camilleri. IZ coats and jackets have false buttons that hide magnetic fasteners, while zipped models also have a hidden magnet, allowing them to be easily folded to make dressing easier for those with mobility issues.
Looking at the many flaws in traditional clothing design, it can seem as if society, or more specifically the fashion industry, is compounding the harm done to people with disabilities. So is it appropriate to label traditional design as ‘able’, or non-disabled? Jenkins believes that the current way of thinking about fashion is also counterproductive for businesses. “It’s sheer ignorance, but that’s not always a brand’s fault,” she says. “We’re so isolated from each other that it’s just a case of out of sight, out of mind. I think it’s exclusionary and I think that every Brand that describes itself as sustainable needs to consider what it means for them to exclude 25 percent of all people. We have limited resources and we need to use them smarter, and that means embedding universal design practices into everything.”
This article was published on FashionUnited.com. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ