Installation view, "Functional Fashions," Milwaukee Art Musuem, 2019.

*Within the disability customs today, some may prefer identity-commencement language (due east.g., "disabled person"), or person-beginning linguistic communication (due east.g., "person with a disability"). Considering the curators practise non know the preferences of the historical subjects in the "Functional Fashions" brandish, they chose to use identity-first language based on the recommendations of collaborators.

The mistaken belief that in that location is no history of vesture designs for disabled users has had a number of repercussions. Among them: nearly all designers treat their own iterations every bit countdown, there has been a dearth of innovation as designs are continuously repeated, and inability-led innovation is written out of the historical record [1]. Not only is there a long history of clothing designed by and for disabled persons, but in some cases information technology sets a college standard than the efforts that followed. "Functional Fashions," a display in the 20th- and 21st-Century Blueprint Galleries at the Milwaukee Fine art Museum, introduces the largest collaborative clothing line for disabled persons in American history.

Betwixt 1955 and 1976, nearly xxx of the United States' top article of clothing designers created garments to fit disabled bodies under the Functional Fashions line. Brands ranged from high-end sportswear to everyday labels. Leading the charge was designer Helen Cookman, whose ain disability was hearing loss. During a enquiry residency with Dr. Howard Rusk at New York University'southward Constitute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Cookman recognized a need and a business opportunity: beautiful clothes with features for the millions of Americans living with disabilities. At the Found, Cookman co-authoredFunctional Fashions for the Physically Handicapped and developed a sample drove [ii]. WithNew York Times Style Editor Virginia Pope, she then created the Clothing Research and Evolution Foundation to run Functional Fashions. The clothing line included Cookman'southward own collection, garments by other designers with Cookman'southward innovative features, and outfits already accounted "functional." The line ended when Cookman and Pope passed away and has since been largely forgotten.

During Earth War II, Dr. Howard Rusk noticed that his patients were healed, but unable to work. In response, he developed rigorous rehabilitation programs to assistance veterans adopt a "do-it-yourself" and "self-help" mentality to productivity [3]. Overcoming barriers of the nondisabled congenital environment, he believed, would amend a patient's physical and psychological wellbeing. Rusk applied these same methods when treating disabled civilians at New York University's Establish of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, creating veritable obstacle courses for the body and mind. At the Institute's "self-aid shop," occupational therapist Muriel Zimmerman encouraged patients to pattern their own gadgets for everyday tasks. The strict postwar definition of independence positioned these devices every bit replacements for caregiving, and the ability to dress and undress oneself was 1 of the most important markers of autonomy.

Self-assist gadgets illustrated in Howard Rusk and Eugene Taylor'due south publication Living With A Disability (1953) .

The airplane pilot Functional Fashions line that Helen Cookman adult with Muriel Zimmerman was role of a series of design initiatives at the Institute that deviated from self-assistance devices in that they were accessible from the outset. Cookman's ensembles were not meant to test a disabled user's ingenuity with required adaptations. Instead, Cookman believed that psychological rehabilitation would derive from beautiful, "functional," article of clothing. Cookman's ain hearing loss informed the designs she created at the Institute, having constructed extra pockets on her famed coats to fit the large batteries that powered her hearing aids. Together Cookman and Zimmerman studied the clothing requirements and desires of patients at the Institute, using this data to excogitate of solutions such as shorter suit jackets to eliminate the discomfort that longer jackets often cause wheelchair users, "action pleats" on women'south jackets to permit for easier arm movement, and reinforced underarms for crutch users [4]. The public response to the line was overwhelming. Thousands of Americans wrote in to inquire about purchasing options, prompting Cookman to create the Clothing Enquiry and Development Foundation with the mission of encouraging other designers to incorporate her novel construction features into their own lines [5]. Over the bridge of 20 years, Functional Fashions collaborators included designers of womenswear, menswear, and childrenswear ranging from Pauline Trigère to Joseph Love.

Installation view, "Functional Fashions," Milwaukee Art Musuem, 2019.

Prior to the Functional Fashions line, consumers seeking clothing that fit their disabled bodies had to make or alter their ain garments (work that ofttimes barbarous to women), or search medical device supply stores. Functional Fashions made it possible for style-conscious disabled consumers to find cute, set up-to-wear clothing that met their needs for the first time.

Vera Maxwell remained the longest collaborator, adding Functional Fashions elements to her garments for x years. Indeed, one of her best-known creations, the Speed Arrange, was created for disabled bodies. Fabricated with a lycra-knit pinnacle, it slips over the head with no fastenings, perfect for "the adult female who wants to dress rapidly" or "anyone whose fingers are bedridden with arthritis" [6]. Maxwell also contributed one of the near luxurious Functional Fashions creations, her Rugby Suit, a tweed ensemble lined with seal fur, which had a matching lap robe for wheelchair users. Its closures fabricated use of a new invention, "pressure tape," recognized more widely today by its brand name Velcro®.

Vera Maxwell, Rugby Arrange, Indianapolis Star, Aug iv, 1963.

The Functional Fashions line also highlighted pieces that were not specifically designed for disabled bodies but met this need in novel ways. Nearly notable were American sportswear pioneer Bonnie Cashin's iconic designs, including her signature ponchos and her well-known Dog Leash brim. Her goal was radical for the era: to design high style unrestrictive vesture for modernistic women [7]. Cashin designed this skirt, which outset appeared in Harper'south Boutique in 1957, for a single purpose — to quickly hitch up her skirt with the attached industrial hardware every bit a way of navigating her country habitation stairs with martinis and canapés occupying both hands. Functional Fashions afterwards republished it equally a sophisticated solution for women with express mobility.

Left to correct: Bonnie Cashin, Dog Ternion skirt ensemble, 1957 (courtesy of The Bonnie Cashin Archive, Stephanie Lake Collection); Florence Eiseman, Dress, 1963; and Vera Maxwell, Speed Suit, 1976.
Bonnie Cashin, Domestic dog Ternion skirt ensemble, 1957. Courtesy of The Bonnie Cashin Archive, Stephanie Lake Collection.

Milwaukee-native Florence Eiseman's A-line shapes and high-quality fabrics fabricated her a natural Functional Fashions ally — so much and then that the Milwaukee Sentinel reported Helen Cookman visiting Wisconsin in 1963 to show the fruits of their collaboration [8]. In this period, polio was drawing huge amounts of attending to children'due south disability. The affliction and its disabling furnishings were on the ascent, and since rehabilitation treatments considered dressing oneself a sign of normative development, parents hoped that playful designs would encourage their children to practice this job. Eiseman'southward designs included big, simple shoulder buttons on dresses (which allowed them to easily slip on and off) and trousers with wider pant legs to accommodate braces. At the same time that polio was constructed as a white heart-form affliction that took away innocence, Eiseman was marketing a postwar vision of childhood that was whimsical and characterized by "wondrous innocence" [nine].

Helen Cookman'due south last Functional Fashions collaboration was perhaps her biggest. In 1975, the Levi's® Letter magazine appear that Levi's® jeans would produce a pair of mail-order flares [10]. The design was based on Cookman's patented Trousers for a Handicapped Person, which featured zippers down the length of both legs and a belt that kept the front in identify while the back unzipped for ease when using the bathroom. Cookman passed away 2 years prior to this significant release.

Left to right: Helen Cookman, Trousers for a Handicapped Person patent, 1960; Levi's® Alphabetic character magazine, 1975.

In the postwar era, the state held a notion of independence that expected citizens to be self-reliant while performing productive, gender-normative roles in the labor forcefulness and at dwelling house. The Functional Fashions line was meant to aid disabled users meet the mental and physical requirements of this ideal. Of course, many disabled persons could not. All the same it was an early effort to create accessible, cute garments, and until the Functional Fashions collections are compiled and interpreted, it will likely remain the largest.

You can see the "Functional Fashions" display in the Milwaukee Art Museum'due south 20th- and 21st-Pattern Galleries now through early 2020, and learn more virtually the intersections of disability and blueprint at the Museum'due south upcoming  program, "In Conversation: Design and Disability." This discussion between professor Bess Williamson, disability abet Liz Jackson, and the writer will be held in the Milwaukee Art Museum'south Lubar Auditorium on Thursday, May 16 at vi:15pm.

Natalie Wright is the Charles Hummel Curatorial Young man at The Chipstone Foundation.

[1]Liz Jackson, "We Are The Original Life Hackers," New York Times , May xxx, 2018.

[ii]Helen Cookman and Muriel E. Zimmerman, Functional Fashions for the Physically Handicapped (New York: Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 1961).

[three] Bess Williamson, Attainable America: A History of Disability and Design(New York: New York University Printing, 2019), 43-68.

[4] Howard Rusk and Eugene Taylor, "Functional Fashions for the Physically Handicapped," Journal of The American Medical Association 169 (1959): 1598-1600.

[5] Meta Blackwell, "New Functional Styles Solve Physical Problems," San Bernardino Sun, Apr 19, 1964.

[6] Betty Ommerman, "Fashionable Clothes For Handicapped," Central New Jersey Home News, August 12, 1976.

[7] Stephanie Lake, Bonnie Cashin: Chic Is Where You Detect Information technology (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2016), 66.

[eight] Vivian Kawatzky, "Functional Fashions Designed Without Tears," Milwaukee Sentry, Oct 14, 1963

[nine] Sarah Carter, "Designing the Postwar Child," in Florence Eiseman: Designing Babyhood for the American Century (Museum of Wisconsin Art, 2017), eighteen.

[10]"Functional Jeans Will Help The Handicapped," Levi's Letter of the alphabet (Levi Strauss & Co., June, 1975).