New Company’s Mission is To Make Dressing Easy & Convenient for Everyone

By: Hilary Pham

My nephew Logan is 14 months old, just started walking and wreaking havoc around my cousin Julie’s house, and has the most adorable cheeks I’ve ever seen. 

Not only has it been incredible to watch him develop his unique personality, I’m constantly in awe of Julie and her transition to a mother. A few days ago, she told me how difficult it is to dress Logan in some clothes. He gets pretty cranky when she and her husband dress him in button down shirts which makes their special occasion plans more frustrating.

She’s also thinking about how dressing on his own can help Logan learn to be more independent. But buttons and zippers are barriers to that goal.

Alongside her journey as a parent, I’ve been working on my startup, Equability, to solve some of those issues. On a study abroad trip to Brazil in January 2020, I was grouped with a team to develop a business idea centered around people with disabilities. After visiting hospitals and therapy centers, conducting interviews, and deploying our own survey, we found that certain functional features, like buttons and zippers, make dressing and buying clothes difficult. 

For people with dexterity issues, conditions like Sensory Processing Disorder, and others who struggle with small objects, clothes like button down shirts are hard to wear. Equability was designed to solve some of these problems and adapt clothes to meet your needs.

Equability is a modification service that makes your clothes easier to wear. You can send your clothes to us and we’ll modify the fastening mechanism to magnets, Velcro, or snap buttons. 

Our mission is simple: change clothes, so people don’t have to. We want to modify clothes so no one has to change their lifestyle or clothing style because of their abilities.

Though our first service is focused on button down shirts, it’s only the first of many that we plan to offer. 

Since January 2020, I’ve been working on Equability while finishing up grad school and partnered with my friend and fashion designer, Myia Esper. It’s been a long journey and I’m so proud to share that Equability officially launched on November 1st! We’re excited to offer our button down service and are already working on our next one.

For parents like Julie who want to not only make clothes easier to wear but use clothes to build independence and confidence, Equability offers a convenient and seamless solution.

Check out equability.co for more information and reach out to info@equability.co with any feedback or questions!

Equability is led by Hilary Pham, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studying Information Management. Hilary has a diverse background with experience in commercial lending, as a writer and peer educator with financial literacy non-profits, and as a data scientist with the US government.

She is passionate about helping others and was inspired to carry on Equability to build a more inclusive world within the fashion industry.