Making Fashion Accessible
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Creating new tools and techniques to make fashion, garment construction, and fiber arts accessible to all!
Students work with the NYU Ability project on projects related to the design and fabrication of adapted fashion for people with disabilities. The goal of this VIP is to familiarize students with the process of designing with disabled community members, finding out what is really needed then exploring ways to meet those needs. In addition to exploring accessible fashion, students investigate ways of adapting the tools of fashion design and fabrication in order to support disabled makers.
Students will have the opportunity to explore how digital fabrication techniques apply to a new generation of accessible garment construction tools such as digital embroidery machines, 3D printed knitting machines and looms, laser cutting screens to print on fabric, and hacking sewing and knitting machines with custom electronics and hardware.
Methods and Technologies
- Crafting and manual fabrication: Knitting machines, Sewing Machines, 3D Printed Textile Tools
- Digital Fabrication: 3D Printing, Computerized sewing machines, Laser cutters, Hacking Knitting machines
- Open Source Fabrication and Design Tools
- Microcontrollers and electronics
- Documentation (writing, videos, photography)
- Qualitative data collection
- User-Experience Design
- Usability
- Web development
Majors and Areas of Interest
- Health Professions: Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Medical History, Biomechanical Engineering
- Fashion Related Fields: Costume Studies, Fashion Studies, Interaction Design, Wearable Technology and Art
- Relevant Engineering Fields: Human-computer interaction, Design and media, Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Partners
- NYU Ability Project
- Tisch ITP/IMA
- Tandon MakerSpace
- Steinhart Occupational Therapy
Primary Instructors
- Daniel Ryan Johnston, Adjunct Professor