Imagine Consulting With Potential Customers With Physical Needs Different From Yours
Read Time
1 min read
Posted on
November 10, 2021
During New York Fashion Week last year, a fashion shoot was held that featured four Special Olympics New York athletes.
Celebrity fashion photographer and Special Olympics Champion Ambassador Nigel Barker took photographs of four Special Olympics New York athletes. They modeled adaptable athlete/streetwear from the Be Brave collection, developed through a collaboration between Special Olympics New York and students from the Parsons School of Design.
The unique alliance paved the way for a more inclusive world for athletes and offers the next generation of designers some insight into a whole new fashion market. Through semester-long classes, design students from Parsons meet weekly with Special Olympics athletes (more recently via zoom) to plan and develop athletic gear for people with intellectual disabilities. How could you grow your market share by tweaking products for those with special needs?
Overview
The collaboration between Special Olympics New York and Parsons School of Design brought together athletes with intellectual disabilities and design students to create adaptive athletic streetwear, highlighting the potential for expanding fashion markets by addressing the needs of people with different physical abilities; this initiative, spotlighted during New York Fashion Week by celebrity photographer Nigel Barker, serves as a model for inclusive product development and expanding market reach through direct engagement with underrepresented consumers.
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