Tommy Adaptive and the Complicated Ethics of Having No Alternatives

 

 

Tommy Hilfiger has come out with a line of adaptive clothing for disabled people and I am conflicted. There is so little truly good adaptive fashion available to disabled people and the Tommy Adaptive line is pretty and stylish. Something that is frequently decidedly lacking in adaptive clothing which often seems to presume an elderly clientele and that this clientele will not care if their clothing is hideously ugly (apparently this is somehow a dress and not a hospital gown). I am offended both for this unfortunate assumption about older people and for the fact that clothing brands tend to forget that disabled young people exist.

Adaptive clothing suffers from many pitfalls. If it isn’t hideous then it is still only available online and then may only ship to certain locations. This is true of the Zappos adaptive line (limited to the United States, most models of Nike’s accessible Flyease shoes (limited to the United States), much of Marks & Spencer’s “Easy Dressing” children’s clothing (United Kingdom) and Tommy Adaptive (Canada & the United States). Access to these products requires living in the right country, paying for an expensive forwarding service or knowing accommodating people in those countries. Thank you to the incomparable Alice Wong for sending me my second pair of Nike Flyease shoes after they stopped selling women’s styles in Canada (I will fight anyone who says the friend you make on the internet are fake or in any way inferior to the people you meet in the corporeal world).

The geographical limitations of so many of these products are in and of themselves a serious barrier to access. The fact that most of them are only available online (I’m not sure about the M&S products) requires what is effectively an expensive gamble because they cannot be tried on first (who knew that my autistic self would ever dare buy shoes online but what other choice do I have?). Returning items can be difficult if you are disabled and potentially impossible if you live outside the regular service area and have relied on friends or a forwarding service to get the item. If it doesn’t fit or isn’t flattering then you may be out of luck and out the money.

In terms of actual stylish clothing, Tommy Hilfiger rules the adaptive market. Zappos has a few stylish items designed to be accessible but most of their “adaptive” clothing is really just standard athletic wear. I did not need Zappos consumer research to know that sweatpants and leggings are both stretchy and comfortable. Luckily, I also don’t need Zappos to buy those things. They aren’t exactly work appropriate. They are also culturally stigmatized as the uniform of the lazy if they are worn anywhere except going to and from the gym. They are decidedly not adaptive.

So, Tommy Adaptive enters the market and there aren’t any leggings in sight. There are blouses and cute trousers and cardigans. These clothes are designed to make you feel pretty. It is a distinct departure from almost all preceding accessible fashion. Women’s pants sizes even go up to size 16 which while not an expansive size range is still two sizes higher than Hilfiger’s nonadaptive women’s clothing which tops out at 12.

Tommy Adaptive offers me a unique conundrum because I am both physically disabled and so could benefit from this clothing line (well the tops anyway, my hips and ass will not squeeze into a size 16) and autistic. This is where the ethical conundrum comes in. Tommy Hilfiger, the man is on the board of Autism Speaks.

Autism Speaks is an organization that is deeply unpopular with actually autistic people. (I’ve written about it before so I won’t rehash it all here). Sufficed it to say, I have serious issues with the charity and do not want to support them or people associated with them.

Yet, I cannot tell people not to buy Tommy Adaptive clothing and I cannot even say that I won’t buy any myself. Disabled people have so few options that we do not have the benefit of voting with our wallets and taking our money elsewhere. We do not have the privilege of taking our business elsewhere. There is far to often no place else to take it.

Tommy Adaptive has more or less cornered the market on adaptive clothing that is not either horribly ugly or simply drab and utilitarian. They are more or less the only game in town except the town is actually the world. They provide a product which functionally can make people’s lives easier and which makes them look good in the process. I cannot in good conscience tell people to not take advantage of that if they are able.

All I can do is scream into the void my rage that there are so few options that people are put into the position of having to support companies that they find morally repugnant because there are no alternatives. I am just as furious that the few options that are available are often limited to specific geographical regions and that even if we live in those places that we are relegated to shopping on the internet because products for us are not available in the same way comparable products are available to nondisabled people.

Accessible fashion is unfortunately far too frequently not accessible at all. Yet, these brands are publicly lauded for considering us at all even as they are designed and marketed to keep us separate.

 

 

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