5 minute read
Creating Unhidden Fashion
With seemingly insurmountable issues around accessibility in the fashion industry, Victoria Jenkins is creating her own brand, Unhidden, to lead the way in inclusive design.
Hi Victoria, can you tell us about yourself, in your own words?
In 2003 I moved to London to study fashion. Initially my main role ended up being fashion cutting, but then I slowly fell into being a garment technologist, which is about the construction of clothes and how they fit, and making sure that the production is correct and up to spec. I then worked for suppliers and high street brands with my last permanent role being at Victoria Beckham, which I quit in 2017, so that I could focus on Unhidden.
Alongside all this, in my early twenties, I had a lot of stomach conditions. I kept going to doctors, but there wasn’t anything that they could really see that was wrong. There were a lot of assumptions that I was ‘young and healthy,’ until an undiagnosed ulcer burst in my stomach in 2012. It was a brush with death, but I made it through, and then it was a slow descent into lots of other surgeries and other things being found. It has been a conflict of my health and my career; it has been the toughest thing to manage, because the fashion industry, famously, isn’t very kind, the hours are quite punishing.
With fourteen years experience in the industry, what are the biggest issues the fashion industry has around access, representation and inclusion?
There are a number of problems, firstly, they don’t teach you inclusive design in fashion design courses, which is something I think really needs to change. There are people that are trying to persuade change, for example, London College of Fashion are starting to do it, it’s not part of their fully formed courses, but it’s an additional course. It secondly has to come down to allowing disabled people to be able to study design as well.
And when it comes to the companies themselves, they just don’t hire disabled people and the buildings are often inaccessible.
And thirdly, the mindset of the fashion industry is that you ‘work hard all of the time’ and there are no days off; it is glamourised burnout basically. And that is obviously quite difficult to manage if you are running low on energy due to your disability. The main issue is really how disability is still perceived in the industry. Some of the bigger players know they aren’t hiring inclusively; they really have to change their company structure before they can start doing inclusive design.
You have started your own adaptive fashion brand for disabled people, Unhidden, can you tell us more about the brand and why you started it?
I met a patient who highlighted the difficulties she had with her condition and the clothes she was wearing. She sparked the idea and I started looking and found very little in terms of inclusive design. It’s not just that people can’t shop and wear nice things, it is also the longer term impact, for example, how can you go for a job interview or work in an office if you can’t dress for it.
There are five mens pieces and five women’s pieces in the collection and the seated trousers are very specific for wheelchair users, but the rest of it, anyone can wear them. You don’t have to be disabled to wear them. They just have some adapted features, for example, there are shirts where you can access your arm if you are going for chemo or a picc line, without having to take your shirt off, or the trousers have a bit of elasticity in the fabric itself and also an elasticated waistband with an adjustable front, so that there are many ways of getting into them. The brand is also customisable; if you want to order a shirt we will make the necessary changes to fit your needs. For example, if you need a sleeve shortened because of limb difference or amputation, we will do this before we send you the shirt. The whole ‘one size fits all’ doesn’t really work for anyone, let alone disabled people. It just comes from a point of wanting to give some style back to the disability community and for the disability community to feel included. To give a bit of dignity back.
What are your dreams for the future of Unhidden? Where would you like to see it go?
I have a number of dreams, including a network of disabled and chronically ill people who know how to sew, so that people can approach them to adapt their clothing. They would manage their own hours and be able to say no if they have to, but in the end everybody benefits because disabled people could shop wherever they liked, knowing they can have their clothes adapted.
Ultimately though, the long term goal is to have a proper ‘brick and mortar’ shop, where all the staff are medically trained, it’s super lux and accessible and not this clunky medicalised, sterile looking environment. I would want more than just Unhidden in there as a brand, for it to be more like a department store that is all really inclusive.
Website: unhiddenclothing.com and
victoriaann.online
Twitter: @UnhiddenFashion and
@ToriaUnhidden
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