Open Style Lab’s Angela Delise, Elizabeth Bodzy, Chuyi Sun, and Jonathan Lee watch Peter Trojic move in his wheelchair. Photo originally published by www.blogs.newschool.edu/news.
For many, fashion is used as a mode of self-expression. Bright colors and funky textiles tell a story of a thousand words. But for 13-year-old Leah Zelaya, finding clothing that is both functional and fashionable is nearly impossible. Zelaya was born with the rare neuromuscular disease Scapuloperoneal Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SPSMA), causing muscular atrophy in certain parts of her body. The seemingly simple task of fastening a button or tackling a zipper poses a big challenge for Zelaya.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law that ensures Americans with disabilities have the same public access rights as everyone else and prohibits discrimination. Yet, regulations surrounding fashion design are largely absent. For people who use wheelchairs, braces or canes, their clothing may not fit around or under their assistive devices. Zippers, buttons, and even the classic pocket were designed for the ease of the able-bodied. Varying levels of paralysis and muscular dystrophy call for alternative designs that the fashion market lacks. While this affects people with disabilities such as SPSMA, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and ALS, the unavailability of inclusive fashion will also affect everyone at some point as they reach an older age and face limited mobility.
Open Style Lab is a nonprofit organization catalyzing inclusive fashion design innovation. Aiming to integrate stylish yet functional garments into the fashion industry, Open Style Lab educates about alternative wardrobe adjustments through an award-winning summer program that just went virtual.
In an effort to foster functional fashion, spread awareness and share insights on inclusive design, Open Style Lab was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 2015. Based in New York City since 2017, Open Style Lab hosts a range of interdisciplinary workshops for college students, businesses and people with disabilities. Through these programs, Open Style Lab gathers research on successful clothing adaptions and the design process, analyzing outcomes with the ultimate goal of sharing the data and information on accessible fashion.
Open Style Lab’s 10-week summer program won the Smithsonian National Design Award (Cooper Hewitt) for Emerging Designer of the Year 2019. Originating in the White House, the National Design Award is a highly distinguished recognition in design, Open Style Lab founder and CEO Grace Jun explained.
The program is structured by a 3-tier model of designers, engineers and occupational therapists who co-collaborate with a client, someone who has a disability. “A lot of times [when] people are creating things for people with disabilities, they’re not collaborating with the community,” Christina Mallon said, the Chief Brand Officer at Open Style Lab. Mallon has dual-arm paralysis; she is unable to move her arms. “We saw there wasn’t enough co-creation happening with designers, engineers, occupational therapists, and with the disability community and we wanted to be a platform for that.”
By teaming up with people who have disabilities, Open Style Lab is able to design and create products for people with disabilities by people with disabilities who worked with designers, engineers, and occupational therapists to personalize a product. “[Only] 4% of products, digital or physical, are accessible,” Mallon said. “What we’re trying to do at Open Style Lab is as much research as possible into the needs that people with disabilities have, by them telling us, and then create knowledge and design knowledge around that, and open-source that, so people know this is how you co-collaborate with the disability community.”
In June 2020, Open Style Lab partnered with the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) with the research theme of “Dressing Hacks & Tutorials”. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the summer program was forced to turn virtual, conducted over Zoom. As the 2020 MDA New York State Ambassador, Zelaya was invited to participate in Open Style Lab’s program as a collaborator. In October, Zelaya and her parents participated in a telethon with comedian Kevin Hart to fundraise for the MDA.
During the summer program, Zelaya collaborated with a team of other MDA members who all took part in designing the “Easy-Zip”, an adaptive zipper device, with Open Style Lab. “It's a silicone clay mold,” Zelaya said. “They would send us packages to test it. It's an oval shape. You put it on the zipper and you zip it up and you zip it down. It's very simple. You can leave it [on] permanently or you could take it off.”
Leah Zelaya presenting her “Easy Zip” invention. Photo originally published on www.elle.com.
“Pinching things is not really easy for me because one hand is weaker than the other one, and I don't want to use both of them, so it's really hard,” Zelaya said. “My fingers can turn red. And this just really was like, easy-breezy, not even breaking a sweat.”
Open Style Lab collects research gathered through these programs and shares it directly with clients through consulting services for a wide range of businesses. It has worked with many corporations, including Macy’s, IKEA and Microsoft.
In 2018, Open Style Lab ran a series of panels and workshops on accessible retail space for Macy’s at Herald Square, New York. “During these times we do a lot of workshops to show [the] industry what kind of examples are possible,” Jun said. “I think that’s probably the most powerful, to ideate and show how can they bring accessibility and inclusion, perhaps through some ideas, into their actual products or services.”
Zelaya had a positive experience with Open Style Lab’s program. “I think that they have a voice for people with special needs, and they educate people who don't have special needs as well,” she said. “At first, I was nervous, but then I wanted to work with them more and I still do because they do really cool things. They make you understand, even if you don't understand. They help you, they don't push on you. They're comfortable to work with.”
Open Style Lab aims to spread awareness, share data and promote inclusive design within the exclusive fashion industry. The celebrated summer program has always been in-person, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it turned virtual. While Zoom lessons may prevent hands-on, collaborative studio work, it opens a range of opportunities that allow for more people to join from across the world, and of varying abilities.