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Friday, July 4, 2025

Funk adaptive clothing wows Sando

by

20161010

Adap­tive cloth­ing, de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for peo­ple with var­i­ous types of dis­abil­i­ties or lim­it­ed mo­bil­i­ty, is pos­si­bly the lat­est kid on the in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion block. It has been iden­ti­fied as a niche mar­ket. Big names like Tom­my Hil­figer and Nord­strom have al­ready jumped on board and brought out adap­tive cloth­ing col­lec­tions. Yet, lo­cal­ly, there's no sign of this in lo­cal stores or our fash­ion run­ways.

How­ev­er last Sun­day, some de­sign­ers from the Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion De­sign (CAFD) of UTT showed their ver­sa­til­i­ty and took this is­sue head-on. Mod­els, in­clud­ing Athali­ah Samuel and Greer Iton, strut­ted the run­way, wear­ing adap­tive pieces cre­at­ed by var­i­ous de­sign­ers, both promi­nent and rel­a­tive­ly new.

The plan was to de­sign cloth­ing that would make the dai­ly task of dress­ing eas­i­er and even fash­ion­able for the dis­abled while rais­ing funds for the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties (NCPD).

Ac­cord­ing to NCPD vice chair Dr Na­tal­ie Dick, the or­gan­i­sa­tion "plans to use its al­lo­ca­tion from the fund-rais­er for the in­stal­la­tion and pur­chase of a se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem for both of its build­ings, the main lo­ca­tion on New Street as well as the Unit of NCPD on Seukaran Street, San Fer­nan­do".

The in­au­gur­al event, ti­tled In­clu­sion Dans La Mode (IDLM), took place at OA­SIS Gar­den Ter­race, Cir­cu­lar Road, San Fer­nan­do. It was col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties (NCPD) and T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion–cen­tral branch. Re­mark­ably, every­one who took part in the show gave their time for free.

On the run­way that evening, the work of lo­cal de­sign­ers who vol­un­teered their tal­ent and gar­ments free of charge were show­cased. The de­sign­ers in­clud­ed Dar­cel M de Vlugt, Robert An­tho­ny Young (The Cloth) Shaun Grif­fith Perez De­signs, Do­minique La Roche (DLR De­signs Bou­tique), Natasha Athara Lewis, Har­vey Robert­son (CAFD Stu­dent of the Year 2016), and Don­na May Bap­tiste (Coloured Souls).

Fash­ion de­sign­er Do­minique La Roche, de­scribed cre­at­ing pieces for IDLM as "a re­fresh­ing and in­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ence." Har­vey Robert­son, CAFD Stu­dent of the Year 2016, pre­sent­ed his The­sis col­lec­tion, I Am So­ca, which in­clud­ed el­e­ments of adapt­abil­i­ty, main­ly by the use of zip­pers.

Robert­son al­so did adap­tive pieces main­ly for chil­dren, that he gift­ed to the chil­dren who mod­elled the pieces. Ac­cord­ing to him, his pieces are meant to al­low peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties to be both fash­ion­able and com­fort­able.

An­oth­er one of the de­sign­ers, Natasha Athara Lewis has a phys­i­cal­ly dis­abil­i­ty but has clear­ly not let that stop her, as she al­so showed her ver­sa­til­i­ty at the show.

There was al­so a silent auc­tion of paint­ings, in­clud­ing a few pieces cre­at­ed by pris­on­ers and do­nat­ed by the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of the T&T Prison Ser­vice from their Art Shop of Car­rera Is­land Prison.

�2 For in­for­ma­tion about NCPD's up­com­ing fund-rais­er Tea by the Sea, call them at 657-4363/221-NCPD.


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