Adaptive Measures

For Pan, who at the outset of the pandemic, took it upon herself to make masks for children, the inspiration came from a variety of sources, beginning with taking classes side-by-side with students from the Special School District of St. Louis from the time she was in kindergarten in the nearby Ladue School District. She recalls a conversation with a high school classmate who had trouble finding a homecoming dress.

“She told me she couldn’t wear her favorite dress because it wouldn’t fit with her walker,” Pan said. “I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable she had to be. I realized there were a lot of kids who didn’t go to homecoming or prom because the fashion industry essentially ignores this.”

One of 150 high school students to receive a national Coca-Cola scholarship, Pan had also struck up a friendship late in her senior year of high school with a fellow Coca-Cola scholar named Cathryn Gray, a native of Atlanta who attends the University of Michigan. Gray has a mild form of cerebral palsy, and when Pan heard about Runway of Dreams, she reached out to her friend for advice. Gray gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.

“I remember when Tommy Hilfiger came out with their adaptive line, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s clothing for us,” Gray said. “I know what it’s like to be ostracized and feel self-conscious. We all want to wear comfortable, fashionable clothes and be in attendance at the big moments.

“And just like my everyday life, like I want to be independent, I want to wear my own clothes.”

So Pan got to work, recruiting Nambara and Roeder, who recruited their friends and fellow students.

Ruppert-Stroescu, whose research explores wearable textile sensing systems for health and well-being, had taught classes focusing on adaptive fashion for wheelchair rugby athletes and taught classes that helped produce fashion for adults with cerebral palsy, was an enthusiastic supporter, as was Jennifer Ingram, a fashion design alum as an undergraduate and now senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School, who originated the idea for collaborative fashion projects at WashU.

The team made connections with community partners Variety, the Children’s Charity of St. Louis; KEEN (Kids Enjoy Exercise Now), and the Special School District of St. Louis. The Program in Occupational Therapy at the School of Medicine got involved, too, with OT students Taylor Church and Tiffany Wei coming on board. They, in turn, recruited Salma Bachelani, instructor in occupational therapy, to advise them.

“One of the first things we did from the OT side was to develop a survey for families to fill out to provide information on what their child’s needs would be in terms of accessibility,” Bachelani said. “Working as a team with the models through Zoom meetings has been a good way to get a feel for their personalities and try to include aspects of that into their designs.”

The students got a grant from CityStudioSTL in the spring of 2021 to help with start-up costs, and when Sam Fox School alumna and prominent fashion designer Paula Varsalona (BFA ’71) heard about the program, she got involved too, sending surplus materials and working with the students via Zoom as well from her New York studio. A community partnership grant from the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement came early this semester.

It is what WashU does best: a multidisciplinary, creative community project hatched in a campus apartment, then taking off fast and furiously; a group of students who saw a need and decided to fill it.

By late September, the students were working with Varsalona on a Zoom call cutting swatches of material she had donated — chiffons and tulles, satins and sequins — with the knowledge of what their particular models were looking for. They went through reams of materials, layering textures and fabrics on top of one another. A few weeks later, the first individual meetings of designers and models — and their parents – began at Variety and KEEN, where measurements were taken, designs were shared and smiles were plenty.

All through the fall semester and into next, student designers will continue to work with the models to custom-design a dream dress or suit that will be modeled on the runway and then theirs to keep.

“Throughout the design process and leading up to the fashion show, we will have a team of students focused on adaptive fashion advocacy and education in the greater St. Louis community, with the goal of making adaptive fashion a permanent part of the St. Louis fashion scene,” Pan said.

“I’ve been impressed by the collaboration between the fashion design students and the occupational therapy students in developing strategies to ensure the participants have a voice in the design process,” Bachelani said. “I love the WashU students’ passion about making fashion more accessible to people that have different needs.”