Adaptive clothing: How some brands are making fashion fun for the disabled

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The Bengaluru resident suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, which has him wheelchair bound. “As a wheelchair champion and motivational speaker, I am representing myself every time I get on stage, so I need to take care of how I look," says Dashgupta, whose singular style is pairing kurtas or T-shirts with dhotis or veshtis and matching stoles or angavastram. “It’s a good combination and easy to wear," he says.

For the National Award ceremony, held in Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi on 3 December (International Day of Persons with Disabilities), Dashgupta wore a tailored paisley-patterned bright blue kurta with a red dhoti and a matching sleeveless jacket. While he credits his mother who tailors his outfits for the compliments that come his way, Dashgupta is quick to point out a glaring blind spot in the Indian fashion space: the minimal presence of adaptive fashion brands. The way he has managed to keep his wardrobe updated is by shopping—mostly online—from men’s plus size brands and customising the clothes to fit him. 

The umbrella term “adaptive fashion" or “adaptive clothing" refers to clothes designed to make everyday dressing easy for the disabled, or those with conditions that affect their mobility, such as arthritis or cognitive impairments like Alzheimer’s, or the elderly who need assistance on a daily basis. Garments made in this category come with modifications— think open-back tops, pants with side openings or detachable legs, and skirts and dresses that wrap easily. Most of these clothes have details like velcro strips, zippers, titch buttons or magnetic snap buttons that make the task of getting in and out of clothes effortless for the wearer, either by themselves or with assistance.

A quick search online tells you that adaptive fashion is a steadily growing segment in the West with mainstream brands like Primark, Tommy Hilfiger and Victoria’s Secret having launched adaptive fashion lines in the last few years. In India, where the population of people with disabilities is 26.8 million as per the 2011 census, awareness of adaptive fashion itself is glaringly low. But a handful of independent brands are trying to change things by making clothes that are both functional and good-looking.

“The clothes you wear affect your mood and confidence, and just like you and I have our favourite pair of jeans that lifts our spirits, why shouldn’t someone who is in a wheelchair not wish for clothes that make them look good?" says Kkushi Gupta, a Delhi-based fashion entrepreneur who launched her adaptive fashion brand, Haxor, in late January this year. For Gupta, the inspiration to launch the brand came from personal loss.

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“I was taking care of my mother who was suffering from cancer and I saw from close quarters how inconvenient regular clothes can get for bed-ridden patients or those with any kind of disability. I ended up studying about adaptive clothing because I wanted to design clothes for my mother," she shares. While she lost her mother, Gupta, armed with over a decade of experience in the garment industry as a wholesale manufacturer, had enough reasons to enter the adaptive fashion space.  

“There is a big void here. The customer base is significant but there are very few Indian brands catering to it and shopping from international brands is expensive," says Gupta, who has positioned her brand as “specialising in elderly and adaptive clothing". The catalogue, catering to both men and women, includes open-back T-shirts, kurta pyjama sets, co-ord sets, wrap skirts, pants, dhotis, and even safari suits that differ from the regular versions because of thoughtful details like magnetic snap buttons, velcro strips and zip closures. Priced between ₹1,500-3,000, the designs are simple but the aesthetics aren’t ignored. So you have T-shirts and trousers in bright colours, a dress in a vivid tie-and dye print and a wrap skirt in floral print.

“There’s a term,‘enclothed cognition’ (coined by researchers Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky), which refers to the impact our clothes have on our psychology and that guides me when I create clothes for the brand," Gupta says. Orders, since the brand went live, have been constant. “We get a lot of orders on our website, Instagram or Amazon from Punjab and the south," she adds.

In another part of Delhi, a group of students from the Delhi College of Arts and Commerce—who are also part of international not-for-profit student body organisation Enactus—are engaged in running Project Riayat. Conceived in late 2023, Riayat focuses on making clothes for PWDs (persons with disabilities) using textile surplus provided by textile brand StyleFab. While the students take on roles in research, design and marketing of the clothes, the project employs around 25 disabled individuals to make them in production units owned by the NGO, Family of Disabled in Najafgarh and Janakpuri, Delhi.

“We are right now making clothes for those with lower body disabilities," says Sharmishtha Nigam, 20, a member of Enactus and part of the project. “Our first offering is a range of pants, priced between ₹1,200-1,500, with details like velcro strips and magnetic snaps that can be easily worn by those who may have difficulties using their hands. For people in wheelchairs, we have made pants with open backs, which can be wrapped around quickly with minimal support,," she adds. The design inputs for the garments, which will be retailed mainly on the website (riayat.in) came from talking to PWDs. “One of the insights we got was how they are ready to spend money on adaptive wear but the option that is currently available to them is to buy regular clothes and customise them to their bodies—like cutting out or stitching up a sleeve or a pant leg."

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Shopping from regular stores and getting clothes customised is something Chandigarh-based Somya Thakur is used to. “I mostly buy dresses, both short and maxi, as they are convenient when you are sitting for long hours in a wheelchair. I get my tailor to alter them or add details like velcro straps for western wear and doris (ties) for Indian wear based on my needs," says Thakur, who is in her late 20s and has scoliosis. While she counts H&M and Only among her favourite brands, Thakur rues the absence of adaptive fashion brands. This, in fact, proved to be a pain point while she prepared to take part in Miss Wheelchair World pageant in Baja California, Mexico in 2022.

“I had to search hard for designers who could create outfits specially for the competition," she recalls. A local bridal and prêt designer store Arzoe came to her rescue. “I wore a royal blue dress with white stone work for one of the gala dinners," she says. Thakur bemoans that in a country where accessible travel for PWDs is still overlooked, fashion is nowhere in the picture. “I am an inclusive fashion model and believe it would be good for brands to include people like me in their campaigns but there are hardly any that associate with us," she says. 

A SMALL START

“I want to own a pair of denim pants, can you please design one for me?" Of the many interactions she had while doing research for Haxor, Gupta recalls this request from young amputee for jeans that wouldn’t be cumbersome. “He told me that he never wore jeans because it entailed removing his prosthetic. So his simple wish was for adaptive jeans," says Gupta, who is working on “amputee prosthetic inclusion denim pants" for both genders.

Rainna Goel, 19, runs Cur8ability, an adaptive label from Mumbai and Austin, US, where she is currently based. The D2C brand makes kurtas, velcro saris, kaftans and jumpsuits and receives orders on the brand’s Facebook and Instagram pages. Goel started the brand from a school project in 2020.

“I started Cur8ability when I discovered that there were only one or two Indian brands that were making clothes for PWDs. While the disabled community may be a minority, they are a significant minority that cannot be ignored," she reasons. The brands Lounge reached out to operate as independent entities that are mainly bootstrapped and the volume of clothes made is entirely based on orders received. With a lot of their clientele having their unique set of requirements, offering customisation services is essential. But the response so far has been encouraging, they say.

“Like men’s fashion, women’s fashion and wedding fashion, my hope is to see adaptive fashion go mainstream," Dashgupta says.

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