Can Disabled People Be Into Fashion? the fit and the fight.
Drawing the curtain to the dressing room closed, I hung the dresses up on the hook and started to pull off my sweater and top. I glanced at the tiny stool that had been provided for women to sit on. Made out of shiny plastic it looked flimsy and not sturdy enough to hold me whilst I removed my shoes and jeans.
So I left my jeans and shoes on and reached for the first dress.
It was a pretty red colour. My friend had told me it would look stunning on me. I was nervous about it though. Ever since I was a teenager I had become increasingly aware that I tend to sweat more than your average person. Amputees and limb different people sweat more because we have less skin surface area and sweat glands to manage our bodies temperature.
Excessive sweating was something I was really self conscious of in my teens and twenties. Wearing bright colours always seemed to make the sweat stand out more.
The red colour of the dress looked great, but it’s sleeves clung to snugly on my arms, I could imagine the sweat stains during a night out. I moved onto the next dress.
Navy blue, this dress would hide my sweat stains, but it was long sleeved. Once on I did what I always do with long sleeves, I pushed the right sleeve up to fit my shortened right arm.
It looked hideous.
Pushing one sleeve up creates a frumpy, slightly lopsided look across the back and shoulders of any outfit. Some clothing I can fold the sleeve, but it never looks quite right. My mother, who was a whizz on the sewing machine, always had a solution to my clothing problems. She could snip off any part of my clothing that needed adjustment and make it look neat and beautiful.
I am not as good on the sewing machine.
And do you know how expensive it can be to use a tailor all the time?
The third dress was my ‘wishful thinking’ dress. Black, perfect to hide sweat stains. Sleeveless, no hemming to do. Figure hugging, unfortunately unflattering. It was a bandage dress. You know the one I’m talking about? Designed by Hervé Leger and made famous by all the 1990’s Supermodels. I had wanted one since I was a teen and now as an adult woman with a bum and boobs, I wanted to show them off in this dress. I was determined to have one.
Squeezing into the dress was an effort, rivalling a cross fit workout at the gym. But I got into it, only to have my heart break as I looked in the mirror.
My hips are very wonky because of my prosthetic and by upper body twists slightly because of my scoliosis. The bandage dress made all of these aspects of my body stand out even more. The fact that I had had to squeeze it over my jeans didn’t help as well. Dejected, I slipped the dress off.
I didn’t buy anything that day because nothing in the shops seemed to fit my body shape right. This isn’t a new thing and it isn’t an old thing. Whether I am shopping in person or online I constantly have a babbling stream of criticism running through my head.
“I can’t wear those trousers because I am short and I would have to pay someone to take them up,” “Well that maxi dress would be impossible because it’s a) to long and b) to tight,” “That leather jacket sure looks nice, shame it would make it impossible for me to function as I wouldn’t be able to use my right arm at all whilst wearing it.”
There’s a constant censoring of myself, of my body. More extreme than the average woman’s censoring. It is censoring based on the tailor and fit of an outfit and how it might make your perceived flaws on your body stand out. To travail the fashion landscape can seem an almost impossible feat for disabled women, whether you wear a prosthetic, use a wheelchair, or have an invisible illness.
Disabled women are fighting back though, because disabled women deserve the choice to be as fashionable (or not) as they want. One way that disabled women are starting to confront fashion stereotypes is by taking part in or creating their own fashion shows, working with designers to adapt clothing to fit all bodies.
In recent years Madeline Stuart, a 21 year old Australian with Downs Syndrome, has taken the fashion world by storm. Madeline’s modelling career began after she attended a fashion parade in 2015 with her mum. Madeline declared that she wanted to be a model. With support from her family she started a gruelling training regime to get fit and healthy. A before and after social media post, that showed Madeline’s physical transformation, went viral. This cemented Madeline as the new fashion influencer to follow.
Madeline has modelled in New York Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, Runway Dubai, and Style Fashion Week, just to name a few. She has been featured in fashion tomes like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Marie Claire, and was named model of the year by World Fashion Media in 2016.
These experiences in the fashion world lead Madeline to launch her own fashion label — 21 Reasons Why by Madeline Stuart. 21 Reasons Why creates clothing that is inclusive and celebrates life. As Madeline’s team states, her “mission is to continue to spread her message of inclusion; that there are no boundaries regardless of your age, size, race, height, or disability.”
In the US there is project that is focusing on creating modelling and fashion opportunities for disabled women called Fashion is for Every Body. The projects mission is to
“…use fashion as a language to promote body-positivity and self esteem while seeking inclusion for adults of all ages, sizes and physical abilities within the fashion industry.”
Fashion is for Every Body works with designers, photographers, and brands to facilitate partnerships to bring more diverse and non-traditional models into the fashion industry. This project is leading in an industry that is quickly trying to catch up.
Last year design maven, Tommy Hilfiger, created 10 adaptive styles in their Hilfiger X Zendaya collection. To quote the man himself,
“The added benefit is discreet, truly functional modifications that make getting dressed easier and allow both children and adults with disabilities to have independence and feel great about themselves.”
At the same time as Tommy Hilfiger was breaking stereotypes, Nike launched their Air Zoom Pegasus 35 FlyEase trainers. Made without the need to tie laces, it is a shoe that is easy to slide onto your feet and do up with one hand. Nike is also in partnership with Handsfree Labs Inc to continue developing ideas for handsfree and adaptive shoes for disabled people.
I was inspired to write this article when I listened to an interview with Sinéad Burke on the BBC podcast Ouch! Sinéad spoke candidly about her forays into fashion as a little person and how problematic it is for women her size having to shop in the girls department where their choice in shirts might include one with “Daddy’s Little Princess” written on the front. Her experiences with inappropriate fashion has led Sinéad to become a thought leader in changing fashion and accessibility design.
Sinéad is brave, but not in the condescending and belittling sense of “overcoming her disability.” She has no interest in overcoming her disability, she is interested, however, in accessing the higher echelons of fashion because “that’s where change happens.” This has led to her approaching seemingly untouchable fashion leaders, such as Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief at Vogue and Edward Enninful, the editor-in-chief at British Vogue.
This fearlessness in approaching fashion royalty saw Sinéad became the first little person in history to be on the front cover of Vogue.
What is important to note, with all of these shifts in the fashion industry towards difference and disability, is that we are starting to see a rethink on who is interested in fashion. An understanding of who wants to wear fashionable clothing. An acknowledgement that disabled women want to wear the latest fashion without worrying whether their trouser leg will get caught in their prosthetic knee. Or that their dress will tangle in the wheels of their wheelchair. Or that they can’t wear the latest Nike joggers because you need two working hands to do them up.
Last year I attended the awards of Inspiring Women Changemakers. And I felt fabulous. A few weeks before the awards I had found a dress that was on point and looked absolutely amazing on. It has half sleeves, which meant it fit my little right arm to perfection. It clings lightly to ones curves, which meant it accentuated my ample bosom and kick-arse hips, without making me feel that people seeing my hips could tell they were uneven.
I felt sexy. I felt empowered. I felt confident.
I felt like how I want to feel as a woman.
And that is all we want from the fashion that we wear. To be able to express how we feel. To be able to wear our creative identities literally on our sleeves. To be able to walk into a shop and find the perfect dress, the perfect jacket, the perfect pair of shoes for us.
We just want to find our perfect fit. Is that too much to ask?
Elizabeth Wright is a writer, disability activist, keynote and TEDx speaker, and Paralympic Medalist. I believe in a fair and inclusive world where we can use lived experience story to encourage discussion and acceptance of difference. You can find me here on Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin.