Buy my book on Bloomsbury (ebook), print on Barnes & Noble or AMAZON (July 2024), & more on Google.

What is the book about?

Fashion, Disability and Co-design (2024) shows how collaborative research methods, inclusive design techniques can produce products like garments and accessories that increase social inclusion for people with disabilities. This book outlines practical techniques to help designers create their own inclusive collections, with detailed examples from interviews with professionals. 14 illustrated case studies show how engagement with disability communities to co-design adaptive clothing and accessories can lead to functional, wearable solutions for people of all abilities without compromising style.

What people are saying about the book:

“As an architect with a disability who participated in Grace’s design lab, I found that her writing successfully captured her methodology and the most intimate details of the design process and product. If you want to learn from an emerging design leader, read this book – you will be inspired.” – Douglas Balder, Balder Architects

“In Fashion, Disability, and Co-design, Grace Jun masterfully explores the intersection of fashion, design, and accessibility. This book is a beacon of hope for anyone passionate about creating a more inclusive world through clothing. Whether you’re a designer, advocate, or simply curious, Fashion, Disability, and Co-design invites you to reimagine fashion as a force for positive change. Grace Jun’s work inspires us to create a world where everyone feels seen, celebrated, and stylish.” – Christina Mallon, Head of Inclusive Design at Microsoft

“Fashion, Disability, and Co-design is THE book i will reference in my undergraduate design classes at Parsons. It provides high level understandings around inclusive design and how to collaboratively design with people with disabilities as well as step by step techniques, methodologies, and models that are easy to follow and apply.” – Tiffany Hwang, Lecturer at Parsons School of Design

“Grace gives a deep dive of methodologies across disciplines, history and actual case studies of co-design in action. This book goes beyond what most evidence has been missing – it’s comprehensive on why and how designing with individuals with disabilities is a need!” – Staci Chan, Occupational Therapist

My mask design featured in the Washington Post in light of COVID-19 was created in response to caregivers, personal assistants, and inclusive of some disability needs. The mask design considered differences in people’s faces, such as the nose bridge or length of the jawline. The construction and video tutorial aimed to be simple and easy enough for hand-sewing and machine sewing.

Health care workers expressed the urgency of needing to keep one mask throughout a week or more. The additional clear mask design was created to be worn loosely on top of fabric masks. The clear mask used a vinyl type commonly found in brands that were used in hospitals. Readers were able to print the mask design to 8.5×11 sized paper or cut out to size in the paper Sunday time version of the Washington Post.

A custom annual report booklet designed for Open Style Lab, a nonprofit that aims to make style accessible with and for people with disabilities. The 9 x 12 page booklet utilizes die cut, silver foiling, and perforation in select pages. Debossing was used to accent specific features and legibility for people with low vision. The booklet features the nonprofit’s team of people with disabilities, colorful research journals, and quotes from the community.

A co-authored publication called Universal Materiality ISBN:978-962-367-830-8, summarizes materials designed with and for disability using technologies for fabrication and in textiles. I art directed the branding and content for the Universal Materiality New York exhibition that celebrates interdisciplinary collaboration between academic institutions, nonprofits, and design studios. The exhibition took place on 13th street 5th avenue at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries and showcased eight exemplary adaptive fashion garment pieces with the technologies used to fabricate and prototype each design. The dress forms for each adaptive design were fabricated by SOUR Studios  The adaptive designs, prototypes, print and book material by Open Style Lab in partnerships with The New School Parsons School of Design, Riverside Rehab, and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

A series of six adaptive fashion jackets that provided design features to ease dressing and prevent of pressure sores for women recovering from breast cancer surgery. In collaboration with breast cancer survivors and Dorothy Jordon, these jackets were designed to address the lack of workwear appropriate garments for people with disabilities or in transitional disability experiences. The sixth jacket incorporates sensors and a gyroscope to detect arm movement for Dorothy when practicing her physical therapy exercises. The data collected was shared with her and her physical therapist for an accurate record of body movement in the arm, shoulder, and upper chest area.

I taught several courses during my full-time position at Parsons School of Design. I introduced a new interdisciplinary elective course to challenge assumptions on fashion’s exclusiveness and accessibility barriers faced by people with disabilities. These barriers are explored as a larger conversation between fashion and health through design examples such as hospital clothing, assistive wearables, and protective wear like PPE. Students were encouraged to study historic and present-day examples of how wearables (clothing, accessories, or assistive technologies) have been shaped throughout recent years with their own project interests.

One of the most significant courses I taught was an elective open to all design majors that invited people with disabilities to make adaptive designs each semester from 2017-2019. The class, featured on the NYTimes Style in 2017, explored topics on inclusive design, universal design, and adaptive fashion. The curriculum was based on the program I designed for Open Style Lab.

Initiated a collaboration with a design studio called Noumena, for a “Shape Changing Materials” workshop focused on smart materials with computational design and digital fabrication in context to garment solutions. This 3-day workshop explored the possibilities of interactive wearable designs, where participants experimented with responsive shape-shifting materials through 3D modeling and digital approaches using Rhinoceros and Grasshopper.

Instructors:
Efilena Baseta, Grace Jun, Jaskirat Randhawa

Summary of Workshop:
Read paper here

Participants:
Attie Chan, Autumn Kietponglert, Boris Yu, Fulya Turkmenoglu, Harmony Pilobello, Ivor Ip, Jordan Frand, Mia Baldonado, Pablo Criado-Pérez, Ran Tian, Renata Gaui, Savani Mirashi, Suma Balaram, Savani Mirashi, Terricka Johnson, Xiang Liu

As part of 5-day workshop series exploring smart textiles and social impact, I was invited to the Hong Kong Poly Technic Institute to provide a lecture on inclusive design & adaptive fashion. Participants begin making mood boards, collages, and rough idea sketches where I provided guidance in the potentially applying smart textiles or other technologies that would facilitate accessible dressing.  The workshop encouraged conversations about style and body inclusivity into visual forms of inquiry for the future of fashion. Each participant will create collection sketch (6 outfits) based on inclusive design topics centered on disability.

I provided disability case studies and examples for participants to create their own dressing scenarios that focus on functional and/or stylish opportunities that are inclusive of all people. Using the stencils provided, swatch scraps, and magazines, participants will sketch a collection look (6 outfits) based on individual interpretation of a dressing experience based on 1 of 4 following topics below:

• Hands-free dressing
• Quicker dressing experiences
• Collaborative & assistive dressing
• Interactive dressing – voice activation

Awarded the National Design Award for Emerging Designer in 2019, I provided a lecture on exploring simple sewing hacks with references of fashion designs inclusive of disability. In partnership with Open Style Lab and Cooper Hewitt, my lecture included participants of a variety of disabilities and age groups. (Photo by Dana J. Quigley). The pdf stencils can be purchased at Patti & Ricky.

I was invite to present a 2-day workshop at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea to explore interaction designs for wearable solutions. I worked 16 students from fashion, textile, and engineering with lectures on user experience and case studies on adaptive fashion. The objective of the workshop was to not only to share my experiences, but focus on clothing closures as a domain for applying user-centered design. Students used conductive fabric, thread, muslin, 3V batteries, and was provided a sewing machine to create zipper closures using LEDs. The second day, the students were briefly introduced to Arduino applications and development of user scenarios. The students were quickly explored basic physical computing to develop ideations.

In celebration of Women’s History Month and Women Dressing Women exhibition, the MET Museum included a discussion on March 1 titled Empowerment Through Practice in Fashion, which will feature a panel of experts and advocates working in the areas of accessible and sustainable fashion. See the talk recorded <here>

Provided a podcast interview for the newly published report Disability Design, commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. See here.

Watch here

Watch here

Watch here