Sophia Lester is a 21-year-old woman from Concord, Massachusetts. She is currently in the BAFA program at The New School, where she is earning a degree in integrated design, with a focus in costuming, from Parsons School of Design and a degree in psychology from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.
At 12 years old, Lester was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes joint inflammation. Once she became an adult, the diagnosis was updated to rheumatoid arthritis. In one of her integrated design courses, she was able to combine her passion for design with her personal experiences living with a chronic condition to design a pair of adaptive trousers.
Lester has always had a love for fashion, developing a particular interest in costuming through her involvement with a local youth theater, where she would eventually teach and assist in directing. At 16, she studied abroad in England, where she was able to study textiles as one of her sixth form courses.
On how her condition impacted her dress practices growing up:
“I don’t have a lot of trouble dressing myself anymore because I’ve adapted, and also because I’m not always in a flare anymore, but when I was a kid, I did. I was obsessed with fashion, and I was so devastated that I couldn’t wear everything I wanted to wear because some things were just too tight on my joints, especially my knees and ankles. I couldn’t really wear tight jeans or anything, which were all the rage at the time.”
On what inspired her adaptive pant design:
“In my integrated studio class, we had to make something that would help a group that we are in, so I chose arthritis. I started researching accessible and adaptive clothing, and I looked at the market, and, for lack of better words, the market just kind of sucked. A lot of it looked like scrubs or pajamas. It wasn’t something I would want to leave the house in. And I have an internship. I work a job. Even if I could wear that in my normal life and be happy with it, in the professional world, I never could.”
“They were a pair of dress pants for the office, and they were sleek and a little loose on the knees, so if they were swollen, it wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but they were still something that you could wear out and about. I created pants that had a stretchy waistband. And within that waistband, because people with arthritis get swollen waists and hips, there were straps that connected to buttons, like children’s pants, where the size can be adjusted by putting a button in a buttonhole. So they had that same mechanism, but the straps were extra long so that you could pull the pants up without having to bend down too far, because for a lot of arthritic people, it’s really hard to bend down far. The buttons went on the back of the waist, and were very smooth, and you could tuck the straps onto the button so that they didn’t dig into your waistband. And then the cuffs could fold up with magnets, so you didn’t have to keep bending down throughout the day to cuff your pants if they were too long.”
On challenges she encountered during her design process:
“It was very difficult to make. The biggest issue with accessible and adaptive clothing that is fashionable is that it’s extremely expensive. There’s custom wear, which is great and I love, but not everybody can afford it, especially if you’re paying medical bills. So I was trying to make it as simplistic as I could while making it fashionable. The material to make suits and dress pants is not always cheap, and the stuff that is feels cheap, and a lot of it isn’t stretchy, which I wanted, so it would be easier to put on. Magnets are also not cheap, and some of them are so strong that if you use them near the human body, it’s dangerous because they could pinch you, but then some of them are too weak. Sourcing materials was the hardest part. I already knew how to make the pants. It was a pretty specific pattern that took a long time to develop, but that part wasn’t as difficult as sourcing materials, so that, in theory, if I were to mass-produce it, it wouldn’t be as overpriced as a lot of what’s on the market.”
“I had to make compromises on the style aspect. I purposely chose to make compromises on that rather than the accessibility aspect because that was the whole point of my project, but that was also due to time and financial constraints. I wanted to do different options of colors, add embroidery or beading, but it took a lot of time to develop the pattern. It was difficult because I wanted it to look stylish and not too frumpy, but I didn’t want anything tight to the skin because that’s uncomfortable for people with arthritis. There were many compromises for the fashion aspect versus the accessibility aspect.”
Lester’s design process
On barriers to accessibility in the fashion industry:
“I spoke with a professor who is in a wheelchair, and he talked to me about the difference between ‘for-show’, ‘by-accident’, and real accessible design. There’s the ‘for-show,’ where, especially in the 2010s, a lot of brands were coming out with, ‘Look, this is an accessible line of clothing that we sell.’ A lot of different brands did it, and it was totally for show. It was basically a PR move. Their dressing rooms were still inaccessible, and they only sold this stuff online, so you couldn’t try it on. I’ve also spotted it and noticed the ‘for-show’ accessibility with models who have disabilities, but the clothes are still just the standard clothes they sell. It’s like, does that actually work well for them if they’re in a wheelchair, or did you have to pin that onto them? Did it stay up? Was it just for the photo shoot?
An example of ‘by accident’ accessible design is Old Navy jeans, which are very stretchy compared to, say, Levi’s. When I was young and really struggling with my arthritis, I wore Lululemon leggings pretty much every day, because they were so stretchy, and I would size up so they were easy to get on. But they were also very expensive, obviously, so I had two pairs that I would rotate through, and they were accidentally accessible to me.
With on-purpose accessible design, there are individual brands that do it, but if these big retailers want to do it, they have to do it for real. They have to actually care, which is hard with big retailers, but if the Gap wants to have an accessible line, it needs to look like their real clothes. It can’t look like that stuff sort of dumbed down. It needs to be in stores, and the dressing rooms need to be accessible so that you can actually try them on in-store. I would love to see that from big retailers because I know, especially for teens and tweens, it’s fun to go to a store with your friends, but you want to be able to get what all your friends are getting. As I’ve grown up and grown my own unique sense of style, I don’t care about that. But as a teen and tween, that was pretty important to me, so I think we need to have the same things, but accessible versions.”
“It’s hard to hop on all the trends and also make an accessible line of all those trends. That’s why we don’t have cool stuff that’s ‘in’ right now. A lot of brands will manufacture one line, that line becomes completely dated, and they don’t make the effort to manufacture another.”
“There are the higher costs to manufacture, but the other thing is just, as sad as it is to say out loud, the lack of interest in it. There are a lot of people with disabilities, but if we look at the designers that we know by name, I didn’t know any before I started this project who have disabilities. Those are the people who are going to be pushing for the good work, primarily. Obviously, there are a lot of people who care, but how much are they pushing for it? I think if you took a poll of people, everybody would say they cared, but how much are they really doing? How many designers know and are informed about what is accessible? There just needs to be more effort. There needs to be more care.”
Designed with WordPress