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Looking at a wheelchair user wearing IZ clothing, you wouldn’t be able to tell their outfit is specially designed for a seated person - and that’s exactly the point. The adaptive clothing line was started by Canadian fashion designer Izzy Camilleri in 2004, when she was commissioned by a wheelchair user to design functional - and also fashionable - clothing.
Since then, Camilleri has been creating clothes adapted to a seated body shape. This means skirts with wrap-around waists, dresses with easy-zip backs, pants with no back pockets, and shorts with elastic at the back of the waist. While “normal” clothes can cause uncomfortable bunching, gaping and puckering that can get in the way of wheelchair operation, IZ clothes are cut to fall and drape naturally when the wearer is seated and are designed for easy donning and removal. What’s more, 10 percent of sales goes toward building wheelchair ramps in the US.
While the functional aspect of Camilleri’s clothing line is, no doubt, its selling point, it’s the fact her clothing is fashionable - clothes you’d actually want to wear - that makes it different from similar adaptive clothing lines. By merging style with practicality, Camilleri’s clothing line is setting the stage for future endeavors in the world of disability inclusion.
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