Bringing Coolness to Products for Those With Disabilities
Matthew Walzer was a teenager with cerebral palsy when he sent a letter to Nike several years ago. He explained that he had trouble tying laces and slipping into shoes. But he didn’t want sneakers that looked clunky and clinical. He wanted Nikes, stylish ones like other students wore that worked for him.
In response, the company introduced a line called FlyEase, slip- ons with a zipper that seals the back and then Velcro-ties the top in one simple motion. Not incidentally, they look fantastic. A pair is on view at Manhattan’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in “Access+Ability,” a show organized by Cara McCarty and Rochelle Steiner that runs through September 3.
Too often products made for people with different abilities have been stigmatizing. They’ve been developed not by designers, but by engineers — engineers who haven’t always taken their cues from people who have disabilities, the ones who know best what they need and want.
This exhibition makes plain why design matters. It points toward a generational change in thinking, not just about designing for difference but about diversity and inclusion: Make a specialty item easier to use — and at the same time, fun, cool and beautiful — and that item may be embraced and used by all.
Graham Pullin is one of the designers of a prosthesis in the show, called Hands of X. He cited the example of eyeglasses, which doctors used to call “medical appliances.” Then fashion designers got involved. Annual global sales of eyewear now approach $100 billion.
If hearing aids were given the same treatment, they might end up like the show’s Bedazzled and Bejeweled Earring Aid, by Elana Langer.
“The utility of the most functional object in the world will go to waste if potential users don’t connect with it and can’t see themselves using it,” said Donald Strum, a principal for product and graphic design at Michael Graves Architecture and Design.
The firm has rethought walking sticks, so they work better and use interchangeable handles, colors and tips, which let customers personalize them. Mr. Strum said he approached Target about producing a line of medical equipment a decade ago. The company declined.
The climate has changed. There’s a Target puffer jacket in the show, designed by Mari Anderson Bogdan, with Velcro seams and zip- on sleeves to serve young people who have trouble dressing.
And the online retailer Zappos, in response to petitions from parents, now sells shirts, coats, dresses and pants that are easy on, easy off.
Tommy Hilfiger also has its own line of pants, shirts, jackets, sweaters and dresses, using magnetic closures instead of buttons and snaps. Hilfiger has teamed up with MagnaReady, a company started by Maura Horton, a former clothing designer whose husband suffered from Parkinson’s disease. He had trouble buttoning his shirt. Ms. Horton saw an opportunity.
You don’t have to have Parkinson’s or arthritis or a prosthetic hand to prefer magnets to buttons and snaps, or to like the idea, and look, of Velcro seams and zippered sleeves. There’s a white dress shirt with magnetic closures in the show, which could easily be marketed straight to mainstream consumers. Likewise, pairs of brightly patterned compression socks by Top & Derby.
Compression socks help increase the circulation of blood and minimize swelling from prolonged sedentariness. They’re often worn by people with diabetes or high blood pressure. But, as it happens, fashion models wear compression socks, too, because they spend long stretches of time on airplanes. So do athletes. And what models and athletes wear moves a lot of merchandise.
Compression socks in stylish patterns are just stylish socks that happen to have a medical value for some customers.
“Millennials are incredibly nonjudgmental and accepting,” said Leslie Speer, a designer of a prosthetic leg in the show.
The Hands of X project envisions prosthetic hands made from mixand- match materials l i ke wood, leather, felt and metal. It pictures the acquisition of hands becoming similar to picking eyeglasses: unremarkable and at the same time an expression of personal identity.
And that’s not unlike the thinking behind plastic prosthetic leg covers by McCauley Wanner and Ryan Palibroda, two young Canadian designers who founded Alleles Design Studio. They are intricately patterned, like snap- on tattoos.
“Our stuff is not cheap,” Mr. Palibroda acknowledged, “but we’re the cheapest prosthetic cover company by far, and we get daily pushback from the industry. Distributors and clinicians are constantly telling us to quadruple our prices.”
Ms. Wanner said: “Part of the annoyance of being an amputee is that in public people are always seeing prostheses and asking the amputees to explain what happened, so they’re constantly made to relive trauma. Our desire is that people see these covers and say, ‘cool legs,’ like ‘cool boots.’ ”