Adaptive Clothing: What is it and Who is it For?

Adaptive Design Details by Unhidden Clothing.

The fashion industry is infamously fixated on able-bodies and youth, and does not typically cater to different age groups, body types and cognitive/physical requirements. Adaptive clothing is different. It is designed with disabled people and older adults in mind, to enable wearers to go about their daily lives without their clothing obstructing or interrupting them.

Despite being the largest minority group globally (approximately 15% of the world’s population), disabled people are consistently excluded from participating in the fashion industry and enjoying clothing. With this in mind, “adaptivewear” is designed to be inclusive and aims to benefit a wide variety of wearers, as well as addressing specific individual needs.

Inclusive design starts with fixing the problem for one person and then extending this solution to as many other people as possible. For example, Amazon’s Alexa was originally designed to be used by people who are visually impaired and now is widely used by a broad section of society, love it or hate it.

One of the fundamental requirements of adaptive clothing is access. For many disabled people, the process of dressing yourself can be difficult. Clothing that has multiple entry points can enable easier dressing and undressing by removing the need for stretching or physical strain.

An early example of this design choreography is the “One-Piece Garment” patented by H. E. Larson in 1967. The inventor devised a fully open dress that is wrapped around the wearer from front to back from a reclining, sitting or standing position. This eliminates the need to extend the wearers arms above their head.

Pat. US3339209A Hester Larson’s 1967 “One-Piece Garment”

Access in adaptive clothing can also refer to a requirement to access specific areas of a wearer’s body for medical reasons. For example, wearers may need extra room in a sleeve or trouser leg to accommodate for a prosthesis (an artificial body part).

In contrast to the previous patent, which was designed as one-piece, the “Invalid’s Robe” from 1891 was intended to be constructed from multiple different sections of fabric. This modular garment was designed to provide easier access to different parts of the wearer’s body, without the difficulty of removing an entire piece of clothing. The inventor describes the ability to substitute elements of the garment with fresh pieces of fabric, which “could be accomplished with but little trouble and disadvantage to the patient.” This highlights an instance in the patent archive where the patient’s well-being is explicitly considered a priority.

Pat. US459106A Lizzie Fifield’s 1891 “Invalid’s Robe”

One significant barrier for disabled people and older adults when dressing and undressing are the fastenings on their clothing. For example, small buttons may be to too fiddly for people with low dexterity, and long ties or cords can get caught in wheelchair mechanisms.

Australian inventor Rhonda Newton attempted to resolve this issue through a fastening guidance system, patented in 2006. Newton designed a variety of fastening configurations, that use different shapes and textures to pair buttons to the complimentary buttonhole. By leveraging wearers’ tactile senses, this invention can quicken the dressing process, and gives agency to the wearer, rather than having to rely on somebody else for assistance.

Pat. AU2006100224 Rhonda Newton’s 2006 “A Garment”

Personal agency and dignity are key considerations of adaptive design. Isaac Stratton’s “Pantaloon Fastening” is intended to enable “aged and infirm” men to “serve themselves in calls of nature without difficulty.” This elastic lower front fly features eyelets (small round holes) and a cord that permits convenient access without the need for multiple awkward closures.

Pat. US70645A Isaac Stratton’s 1867 “Pantaloon Fastening”

What we wear allows us to perform different actions. Whether it’s through aesthetic or function, adaptive clothing is designed to allow disabled people to participate in social life and not be excluded from various activities. The patent archive has some brilliant examples of this inclusionary action from around the world. For example, in 2001, James M Cummins patented a “Mitten for Securing a Handicapped Person’s Hand to a Ski Pole” in Canada.

Pat. CA2314761 James Cummin’s 2001 “Mitten for Securing a Handicapped Person’s Hand to Ski Pole”

More than a decade later, Dianne Rothhammer Sheetz patented a “Wraparound Swimsuit” in Portugal to allow people of any age or ability to easily change in and out of a one-piece swimsuit by altering the access points to a folding motion. Inventions like these are examples of the empowering nature of inclusive design to partake in sporting activities and increase independence.

Pat. PT1887895 Dianne Rothhammer Sheetz’ 2012 “Wraparound Swimsuit”

Some of the best inventions are seamless, almost working invisibly. A lot of adaptive design is intended to be hidden, so that the clothing appears ‘normal’. These concealed alterations can allow disabled people to act as everyday citizens, without their impairment being immediately visible. The patent for a “Necktie Fastener” from 1896 features a secret clasp, for easy manipulation. Hidden behind the main tie knot, it allows the wearer to dress neatly and ‘fit in’, in a formal context.

Pat. US573733A William Waterbury’s 1896 “Necktie Fastener”

However, adaptive clothing doesn’t have to be subtle or attempt to mask disabilities but can instead bring attention to the wearer and not the impairment. In 2015, a French patent for a “Ceremonial Garment” illustrates a frock for events requiring “high-fashion dress”. It features an interchangeable adaptation of the chair itself to conceal the lower section of a wheelchair. This combination of engineering and fashion design distracts from the wheelchair and instead draws attention to the wearer. Literally enlarging the garment to take up and claim space with dress.

Pat. FR3010872 Brifaut-Chebi Romain’s 2015 “Ceremonial Garment for a Physically Disabled Woman in an Adapted Wheelchair”

Going forward, we are looking to dissect the word ‘adaptive’, what it means in the context of clothing design and how it is used in the patent archive. We aim to find out which bodies have been invented for and by whom? Whose functional or aesthetic needs have been catered to, and who has been left out?

Clothing is our body’s most immediate and intimate environment. It has the potential to both enable and disable people. People are shaped by society and the built environment, including what we wear. Many inventors in the dataset have aligned with the social model of disability, which focuses on disabling environments rather than individual differences. This theory argues that people are restricted by an automatically hostile world, not by their impairment directly. People are disabled, they don’t have disabilities. Inventors have used adaptive clothing innovations as tools to shift the responsibility away from the disabled individual, to a society that disables us.