In early June, Keisha Greaves was at Miami Swim Week, watching as models strutted down the runway in designs from her fashion line, Girls Chronically Rock.
The models were decked out in hot pink swimsuits and T-shirts emblazoned with vibrant, graffiti-inspired print. A standout moment came when a male model ripped off a T-shirt that had Velcro closures on the shoulder. That swift action punctuated an already historic moment: This was the first time the Miami fashion event featured swimwear designed specifically for people with physical disabilities.
“I still get chills and [I’m] still on a high from that,” Greaves said of the experience.
The Cambridge-based fashion designer’s next big break will come at New York Fashion Week in September, when she will be showing off her line. Greaves wants her Girls Chronically Rock brand to empower the disability community through fashion.
In recent years, the fashion industry has started to become more inclusive to designers and customers with disabilities. From Tommy Hilfiger to Target to Kohl’s, major brands are now offering adaptive styles that use different fabrics and incorporate tools like Velcro and magnetic closures to make getting dressed easier. Greaves is just one local designer who is pushing for inclusivity and accessibility to become a lasting feature of the industry — and not just a trend.
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“I'm so grateful now that [there are] more designers and it seems like it's getting more awareness within the fashion industry,” Greaves said.
Yasmin Keats, executive director of Open Style Lab, a nonprofit founded at MIT that aims to make fashion more accessible, says that there are bright spots.
“There is a lot being done, and brands are starting to understand that it's important,” Keats said. But, she said, there still are few adaptive options in the fashion world, and a lot of room for improvement if brands want to step up.
Greaves, and a number of local entrepreneurs, hope to make an impact.
With her line, Greaves aims to make people “feel happy and feel confident within our own skin because I'm like — yes, we may have a disability, but we still like to go out. We want to have fun, we want to look sexy just like everyone else.”
A passion for fashion
Greaves has always had big dreams to launch her own line. She studied fashion design and merchandising as an undergrad at Framingham State. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy while a graduate student and started using a wheelchair. She pivoted and started to think about what fashion could do to support and inspire other people with disabilities.
Greaves describes her own style as “tomboy/avant-garde”: casual yet experimental. Inspiration comes from her home studio in Cambridge, adorned with tutus, sparkly sneakers, posters of hip-hop legends and pink crystal chandeliers.
The idea for an adaptive swimsuit came from her own experience going to aquatic therapy. Getting a wet bathing suit on and off was difficult. To address that problem, her Girls Chronically Rock design features adjustable straps, hidden fasteners and magnetic closures.
“I wanted to create something to just make it more easier and faster … to take on and off, but most importantly, for us to feel confident within our own skin,” she said.
Greaves hopes to expand and make adaptive pants, shorts, sweatshirts and jumpsuits.
“The overall goal is to add more to the collection and honestly, to build my Girls Chronically Rock empire,” she said.
And Greaves never wants to sacrifice style for practicality. “Fun,” “funky” and “inspiring” are words she uses to describe her line, which also features T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “trust your dopeness,” “hello, my name is chronically ill badass” and “Black disabled lives matter.”
Designers who ‘think outside the box’
At last year’s New York Fashion Week, social media star Shane Burcaw found himself on a runway, wearing a chic purple velvet suit. Walking next to him was his wife, Hannah, wearing a gold one-shoulder gown that shimmered under the lights.
Audience members saw Shane, who has spinal muscular atrophy and uses a wheelchair, make his way down the runway, a smile never leaving his face. What the audience may not have seen was that Shane’s outfit was designed for him, with pants that could be clipped on, and a tux top that was split down the middle in the back to put on more easily.
The designs were part of a “first-of-its-kind show” for New York Fashion week: Double Take, which featured glamorous looks created by Open Style Lab designers worn by people with disabilities.
Keats hopes it’s a sign that the fashion world will listen more closely to people with disabilities.
“I'm really excited,” she said. “I feel that disability is really getting a lot more awareness.”
"Yes, we may have a disability, but we still like to go out. We want to have fun, we want to look sexy just like everyone else."-Keisha Greaves
As a person with a disability, Keats said it can be challenging to find stylish clothes “in a world that is not designed for you.”
Open Style Lab was founded in 2014 at MIT’s International Design Center to “show what was possible in fashion,” Keats said, and create clothing that empowers.
“We also looked at the importance of design and style and how it can change not only the way that you see yourself — but also looked at how it can be a vehicle to change the way that the world views disability,” Keats said.
The nonprofit’s programs bring together people with disabilities, designers, occupational therapists and engineers to collaborate on designs made with disabilities in mind. For example, experimenting with new materials to help people who may have a hard time with their body’s temperature control.
Keats says adaptive fashion can spur creativity.
“Looking at disability can really be another way for designers to look at an idea and just think outside the box,” she said.
Adaptive design can be a ‘game changer’
Nine years ago, Swampscott resident Nikki Puzzo was helping her daughter Stella, who was 5, recover from hip surgery. Stella has cerebral palsy and was left with both of her legs in casts for three months. Puzzo asked her doctor about clothes that Stella could wear, and the doctor had no suggestions, other than blankets and dresses. So Puzzo set out to make her own.
“I went out and bought a pair of pajama bottoms and I took them apart at the other seam and I just sewed some Velcro,” she said. “And it was really, truly a game changer for Stella.”
They realized this could help a lot of disabled people — and their caregivers. Puzzo teamed up with longtime friend Joanne DiCamillo and started befree in 2015, an adaptive clothing company.
“We were both shocked that nothing like that existed at the time,” DiCamillo said.
The design has gone through several iterations, starting with Velcro, then snaps, with the current design using zippers that can completely unzip and open from the outside.
“So you can literally get somebody dressed, they can be lying down, sitting or standing without having to pull pants up through their legs,” Puzzo said.
While creating the design, they met with nurses at Massachusetts General Hospital to understand the needs of people with limited mobility — leading them to make the zippers covered so that they don’t get caught on a person’s skin who can’t feel their legs.
“It's the design that's so genius but so simple,” DiCamillo said.
Stella, now 14, says she loves the pants when she goes swimming, and when she works out with her trainer. Her favorite design is purple and black.
They want to develop leggings, shorts, jeans and dress pants, and hope the fashion industry embraces adaptive products.
“I think it's starting to move in the right direction, as far as more companies are becoming more aware of the need and trying and make fashion more of just an everyday product for people to access,” Puzzo said.
At the end of May, Stella was on the Open Runway at Downtown Crossing, a precursor event to Boston Fashion Week, along with Greaves. A model wore Greaves’ pink and cheetah-print adaptive swimsuit and befree’s adaptive pants; Stella wore a Girls Chronically Rock T-shirt.
Eyes on New York Fashion Week
Greaves is spending the summer getting ready for New York Fashion Week and expanding her line. In New York, she hopes to get noticed by investors and brands who may want to carry her line. She’s working with organizers to make sure she has both able-bodied and models in wheelchairs at her show.
“I want a mixture of both because that is what my line is about,” she said.
As she builds that empire, Greaves takes pride in the everyday ways that her brand can make an impact, like the mother and daughter who saw her Open Runway show in May and immediately ordered one of her adaptive t-shirts The mother, who has cancer, told Greaves that the Velcro makes it easier to get dressed when she goes to chemotherapy.
“That just warmed my heart,” Greaves said. “You never know who’s watching.”
