Designer Tommy Hilfiger is known for his classic American clothing lines for men, women, and children, but recently the fashion mogul has been generating buzz from another style of duds. Hilfiger has designed a line of clothing for disabled children. He has teamed up with Runway of Dreams founder, Mindy Scheier, to create a line of children’s clothing that is fashionable, yet functional for children with special needs.
Scheier, who is a New Jersey based designer, has an 11-year-old son named Oliver who has muscular dystrophy. At the age of 8, Oliver begun wearing leg braces, and she discovered that putting jeans on him and finding clothes to accommodate his braces became increasingly difficult. She noticed the lack of available options and was determined to create some saying, “I couldn’t believe that stylish clothes for kids with special needs didn’t exist, and I was going to make it happen”.
Since 2013, Runway of Dreams has been creating fashionable and functional clothing that will give children the independence and confidence of being able to dress themselves. “One of the most important parts of the design process was to make the modifications invisible so it looks exactly like the original version,” she said.
She pointed out that disabled kids also care about how they look saying, “The notion that if you’re disabled you don’t care about what you look like or how you dress is so wrong. Everybody should have that right. Let’s look at it from the point of view of the caregiver who wants their wife, son, daughter or best friend to look beautiful. I want to encourage people to think, What if I didn’t have options?”
Mr. Hilfiger is the first major clothing designer to offer the enhanced clothing line with the collection priced from $18.50-$42.50. Instead of zippers and buttons for closures, the line features special magnets that are hidden to make dressing easy. The line offers a wide variety of modified clothing including stretch pants, jeggings, bottoms with adjustable leg openings, and shirts with v-neck and wide openings.
The line is a proven success, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the Runway of Dreams clothing line currently makes up 20 percent of Tommy Hilfiger’s children’s clothing sales, and to that we say, Bravo!
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