Pigtails. Frock. Knee-high socks. Tape. Don’t let Soumita Basu get started with the ribbon. “I want to burn it,” says a fashion entrepreneur from Kolkata who finds it ridiculous when a Hindi film dresses people with disabilities as if they were “little kids”.
Typically found in the saree wrapping and the airy kurta denoting her easy-going and mature demeanor, the 38-year-old’s sophisticated wardrobe was born out of her desire to burn something else: a scarf that sits over frozen shoulders for the three winter of Kolkata. That’s when a debilitating autoimmune disorder called psoriatic arthritis started in her ‘gugai’ – the nickname she gave her toes that were painful like sausages – before spreading to other joints that grimaced every time her caregiver tried to insert them into her sleeves and neckline. oversized clothes.
In good health until the age of 30, Basu had to leave his usual clothes behind when his condition had to drop him into a wheelchair. Unable to find elegant options to keep her warm, her mother would wrap it in a scarf in winter and steal it in the height of summer. Desperate to shed skins that require constant adjustment, the former specialist in social research and communications decided to style her skirt as a dress and support the stole as sleeves. The experiment bore fruit.
“I became my own inspiration,” Basu said, remembering the series of trials and errors that followed that led to the pre-lock launch of her own fashion-inclusive label that offers everything from saris that can be worn while lying down to mastectomy gowns that have secret passageways for pipes. fluid that connects the breast area with a pocket of fluid.
Welcome to adaptive fashion, a new world based on Instagram that sees designers and entrepreneurs all over the country tinkering with metal buttons, zippers, velcro, magnets and other stitches in time that will make dressing up not only easier but also dignified for those who own them. disabilities, the elderly and others are limited by conventional clothing. Internationally, the most prominent face of this space is Los Angeles-based disability stylist Stephanie Thomas, who was born with a congenital amputation. While two major global clothing brands have started selling button-down pants and other “adaptive” clothing, in India, the fashion market tends to disappoint nearly one crore of people living with disabilities.
“The largest minority in the world is arguably stigmatized by the majority of clothing solutions today,” said Kerala-based designer Joe Ikareth, who is looking for a solution for his daughter Tilotama – who has a partially paralyzed right arm – leading her to develop artisanal clothing for movement therapy. a creative, psychotherapy field that uses “personal language of movement” and dance for individual health and wellness. Not too far from her boutique in Kochi, lives the creative mind of fashion designer Ashima Bhan, who is currently busy with a waterproof umbrella cloth after getting a call from a mentor for a mentally challenged patient from Gurugram who soils her bed every night.
Although inclusiveness has become sort of a buzzword in the fashion industry, Anita Iyer Narayan of the Pune-based NGO Ekansh Trust, recalls finding no sponsors for their adaptive fashion show in 2019 where they have approached garment companies and fashion labels. Narayan now worries that the emphasis is on selling “when it should be about educating people”.
She may be impressed by Mumbai-based Bachelor of Fashion Technology graduate Saakshi Manhot, who has designed a six-weight removable t-shirt t-shirt for autistic individuals based on Deep Compression Therapy. “Clothes that feel normal to us, cause irritability to their skin. This is known as tactile defense, where a person is very sensitive to light touch. This load presses on their body and creates the feeling of a hug between them, which is necessary to calm them,” said Manhot, who discovered while researching fire-resistant clothing as part of his graduation project that clothing can be a cause of hyperactivity among autistic individuals.
While Manhot waits for the day the brand will start including “distraction clothing” as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility, Basu – who now designs adaptive underwear – wants people to stop asking if his clothes are freely available. “There is a perception that all persons with disabilities are poor, even though this is not the case,” said Basu. “Paying for clothes ensures my dignity as a consumer.”