3 Lessons on Inclusion from the Fashion Industry

Learn how the fashion industry is advancing inclusion, and how these lessons can be applied to other industries.

July 7, 2026
Employment, Inclusion

For a long time, inclusive fashion was mostly about products: what clothing options exist for people with disabilities?

Adaptive clothing was typically its own category, separate from mainstream fashion collections.

But that’s beginning to change. Organizations like the Runway of Dreams Foundation have helped bring adaptive design into mainstream conversations by partnering with major brands and pushing for people with disabilities to be included from the start.

Today, we’re seeing inclusion show up not only in what clothing is available, but in who is represented in front of the camera and involved in creating products before anything hits the shelf.

So what can disability service providers and other industries learn from the fashion industry about inclusion? Here are three lessons worth paying attention to.

1. Accessibility drives mainstream innovation.

Many common clothing features today started as accessibility-informed design choices.

Soft seams, tagless construction, and irritation-free fabrics grew out of feedback from sensory-sensitive consumers about what made certain clothes uncomfortable to wear. Over time, those features have become common in mainstream apparel, with brands marketing them as “tagless,” “soft touch,” or “designed for comfort.”

The same thing has happened in footwear. Hands-free slip-on styles, elastic lacing systems, and “step-in” designs were originally shaped by accessibility needs, but are now common across athletic and casual shoes. In many cases, they’re marketed as convenience features or lifestyle innovations rather than adaptive designs.

This is a great example of how products and solutions designed for accessibility end up making life better for everyone.

2. Representation signals who belongs in a space.

More models and creators with disabilities are now appearing in campaigns, lookbooks, and social content. This visibility is helping to expand the idea of who the fashion industry is for.

Take Sofía Jirau, a model with Down syndrome who walked at New York Fashion Week in 2020 and later appeared in Victoria’s Secret’s Love Cloud campaign. Her presence in both spaces changes how people perceive who belongs there.

And that perception often matters as much as whether something is “technically” accessible.

3. Inclusion works best when it’s built in from the beginning.

Increasingly, people with disabilities are involved in creating clothing, not just buying it. That includes everything from entry-level production roles like cutting, assembly, and packaging to design input and product development.

One example is the Adidas Supernova Rise 3 Adaptive, a shoe designed specifically for athletes with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Instead of retrofitting an existing design, the shoe was created with input from the people who would actually wear it.

When people with disabilities are only treated as consumers, inclusion gets tacked on at the end. But when they’re included from the start, it shapes what gets created in the first place.

Taking these lessons into the mainstream

The fashion industry is far from perfect. There’s still a long way to go to make sure everyone has access to fashion and feels included, but the data suggests it’s moving in the right direction.

In one survey of respondents across BIPOC, LGBTQ+, senior, plus-size, and disabled communities, 80% said they feel the fashion industry is making an effort to be more inclusive.

This shift isn’t the result of a single campaign or product launch. It’s a series of changes happening across the industry from design and product development to marketing and decision-making.

The bigger takeaway is that inclusion has the most impact when it shows up early in the process. Fashion is just one example of that in practice.