SCHEIER AND OLIVER: COURTESY OF RUNWAY OF DREAMS; TOMMY HILFIGER: COURTESY OF RICHARD CORMAN
FASHION
FORWARD
Mindy Scheier
helped launch
fashionable
clothes adapted
for children with
special needs
so that her son,
Oliver, and others
could still wear
the latest styles.
ing that could fit her son and other
children who require adaptive clothing. Oliver desperately wanted to
wear jeans, like his friends did, and
Scheier had to figure out how to
adapt these for his leg braces and his
difficulty with buttons.
Up until now, the adaptive clothing options have been drastically limited and very specific, geared toward
the elderly or those with seated bodies. In 2013, Scheier, a Livingston
mom who had
previously worked at I.N.C. and Saks
Fifth Avenue, founded the nonprofit
Runway of Dreams, which works to
increase availability of fashionable
clothing for kids with special needs.
She put together focus groups and
surveys to find commonalities among
different types of disabilities – the goal
was for differently-abled children to
be able to dress themselves, if possible, and to do so with much more
ease and style.
The research revealed the need for
three changes to mainstream clothing
– closures had to be changed to use
Velcro and magnets; there needed
to be adjustability for the
pant length, sleeves and
waistband; and there
had to be alternate ways
to get in and out of the
clothing.
Tommy Hilfiger teamed up with
Runway of Dreams and, in February
of this year, together they launched
the first season of
adaptive clothing – a 22-piece
children’s line that
looks just like the
clothing in the
company’s
regular spring
collection. >
SPECIAL PARENT | 2017 EDITION 23