Designing with Style for People with Disabilities

National Public Radio (NPR) published a story about multiple individuals who hope to design clothing specific to people with disabilities in its Weekend Edition. One individual is Liz Jackson, author of the blog The Girl with the Purple Cane. Jackson has been lobbying J.Crew, an internationally recognized apparel and accessories company, to carry colorful canes like hers. She argues that treating canes as fashionable items would cut down on the stigma of some disabilities. 

Jackson isn’t alone. At Parsons School of Design graduate Lucy Jones created Seated Design, a collection of clothing for wheelchair users, as her senior thesis and was recently awarded the coveted Womenswear Designer of the Year award at the Parsons Fashion Benefit. Joining Jackson and Jones is a group of students in Fashion Institute of Technology’s technical design program who are also working on clothing designs for people with disabilities. "We have all the technology to be able to modify clothing. It's just not a market that's been tapped into yet," FIT grad Erika Morales says. "If we're students and we can do it, why can't these big companies get ahold of the same concept and do it, too?"