JUNE 25, 2020

It is easy to design for the fashion model and the runway. Most of us don’t have that body type and have practical lives filled up with work, in some cases children and chores to fit in where we find a few minutes here and there. Some of us do all of this in wheelchairs.

Designing for the runway and fashion magazines is where I wanted to begin my career. That wasn’t realistic. I started work as a designer at Comfort Clothing Services, a new adaptive clothing company that was meeting needs for people with disabilities, which mostly encompassed senior citizens, through re-thinking shirts, blouses and skirts, to make it easier for men and women to dress themselves without relying on others for help.

There is a stereotype that exists surrounding the realities of older adults. Current attitudes still make them feel invisible and devalued. So much so that they don’t want to let on that they are senior citizens. Many of them feel a different age than their actual years. Appearance is not a reliable indicator of age or eventful life experiences. Some folks in their seventies function as someone in their sixties while a person in their forties might be functioning on the level of a sixty year old.

The production team was hired through a government program that was meeting the needs of mothers from mother-headed families. The sole support mothers gained financial and employable skills to help them get off the welfare program, Mothers’ Allowance.

They learned skills that included the operation of industrial machines and steam irons, how to spread fabric on the cutting table, transferring the pattern pieces to paper for an efficient layout in preparation for cutting with the electric rotary-cutter, to bundle the garment pieces for the seamstresses, to press and check for quality control.

They were an impressive group of gentle mannered people. A woman, who was a proficient seamstress before she came to the factory, told me that she rubbed her children’s backs at bedtime until they fell asleep. Another cleaned her house every morning before she came to work. They were open with me about their life experiences and their disappointments. Some had partners in prison and others were abandoned without financial support to care for their children and some just didn’t have any opportunities because of their parent’s situations. I learned so much about their side of life. From a quiet suburb of Ottawa to this, I was naive.

The adaptations to garments made more sense.

Technically buttons are sized in “lines”—40 lines equals one inch. Line 30 is the size of a dime. Line 36 is the size of a nickel.

Line 20 and 24 that equals ½ inch and ⅝ inch were the general size for shirts and shirtwaist dresses. After doing a survey of my shirts and my husband’s shirts I found it is still the case. When we used larger buttons that goes along with larger buttonholes to accommodate the button, it reduced the frustration and time lost for less nimble fingers trying to push a small button through a tight buttonhole.

buttons ⅜″–LINE 18, ½″–LINE 20, ⅝″–LINE 24, ¾″–LINE 30, ⅞″–LINE 36, 1″–LINE 40

For some styles we eliminated the buttonhole altogether and used Velcro under the front placket with the decorative buttons, just for appearance sake sewn on the top, and pieces of Velcro on the other side of the shirt to match the button placement.

Why is there only one chest pocket and why is it always placed on the left side? If a person is left handed, the pocket is inconvenient. If a person doesn’t have the use of their right hand or lacks flexibility in their right arm, the pocket is useless. We made shirts with two chest pockets so customers could easily store a small wallet or a pack of cigarettes in either pocket. Smoking was still popular and accepted.

In addition to the change in button size, blouses for women were made with raglan sleeves that have more room in the armhole area and require less flexibility when getting dressed.

Another adaptation was the wrap-around skirt, having two free edges, one of which folds or wraps over the other, allowing for an adjustable waistline. This skirt has been a standard style for decades. A Velcro strip on the waistband instead of a button, made it easy to get dressed. If balance was an issue, the wrap-waistband eliminated the need for a woman to step into a skirt, to get the hook into the loop to fasten the waistband, and zip up the skirt with those tiny zipper pulls. If needed she could even sit down while putting on the skirt.

Fabric was purchased before I worked at Comfort Clothing. Bright colours were the trend for 1978. The cotton that we offered for women’s blouses was inelegant—pastels, muddy colours and small prints that belonged on a quilt. There is less contrast for people with grey hair between their hair colour and complexion. Whether their complexion is warm or cool; black and white solids plus the jewel colours, for example, emerald, sapphire, turquoise, fuchsia and navy for cool complexions and lavender and indigo for warm complexions would have been striking. Why was it assumed that their clients wouldn’t want something on-trend? I expect it was partly due to a new company not having the budget to order large minimum quantities that manufacturers require. Another might have been to avoid larger prints because they need pattern matching that uses up more yardage for the cutting and sewing; expertise that might not have been up to the nascent skills of the women who required confidence building versus frustration.

Small prints in centre column become muddy (hard to perceive) from a distance. Try it- step back!

The wraparound skirt has been around since the 1950s. The one that we produced was made in cotton twill.

Khaki is what I remember. Hound’s-tooth wool, denim or corduroy for fall or a cute check for spring would have been more compelling.

left to right: blue and gray wool hound’s-tooth check, dark cotton denim, teal cotton corduroy

left to right: khaki cotton twill, red Swiss cotton check, blue Swiss cotton check

The last design that I participated in at Comfort Clothing was the early stages of addressing the fit of pants for people who live most of their life in wheelchairs. It was understood there wasn’t a need for the front rise in pants to be as long as it is, for those that are sitting, compared to pants for people who are able to stand. There was a lot of creased fabric that got in the way. The back rise needed to be longer so that the waistband wasn’t constantly being pulled down below the back waistline. I had begun a pattern for the design but developing something like this takes many iterations.

Jim had the plan to get a Doctorate in Urban Planning and Development so he could teach at the university level during the school year, and each summer do one property development for income and personal growth. He was choosing between a start-up opportunity, a doctoral program at Queens and a scholarship program at University of Toronto.

By the end of the summer he was gearing up to start his Doctorate when his principal advisor left Queens to chair the CRTC.

I was enjoying my predictable life with a great job, living in our little apartment and a city that had been my home for four years.

Jim shifted gears and pursued the scholarship opportunity at University of Toronto. We went to Toronto on Labour Day Weekend to see friends from university and find a place to live. We had just arrived when I received a call late at night from my brother. My mother died from her cancer.

It was a shock. I saw her in the hospital before we left and no one had expected this. My father said she could go on for months.  My co-workers were sympathetic. After my mother’s death I could truly comprehend their heartbreak and disappointment. I felt so alone.

Everyone surprised me. On my last day, a package on the lunch table, silver rose earrings wrapped up for me.

Bond Boyd sterling silver rose earrings 1979