The Seeds of Invention
Imagine that you’re in a hotel, rushing to get dressed so you can leave for the airport. You put on your shirt, and as you reach for the buttons, your fingers stop working. Something you’ve done every day for decades is suddenly an impossible task.
That’s the situation 48-year-old Don Horton, an assistant football coach for North Carolina State, found himself in after a game in 2008. As the team bus waited outside, he struggled to get dressed as Parkinson’s disease took its first real toll on his independence. Fortunately, quarterback Russell Wilson, who went on to win a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks, was still in the locker room, and he helped his coach button his shirt and make the bus on time.
When Don returned home, his wife, Maura Horton, listened to his account of his first real battle in the fight against Parkinson’s, and saw something she had never seen before on his face, an expression of deep humiliation, fear and sadness. Maura immediately turned to the Internet to find clothing that would get Don through his next away game, scheduled for just a few days later. She quickly learned that adaptive clothing choices were limited, and that they were all positioned for senior citizens, not for vibrant, youthful people who wanted to maintain a sense of style. Maura also found that some of the “solutions” on the market didn’t solve Don’s problem, as shirts with Velcro fasteners weren’t much easier for him to manage. After much fruitless online research, Maura closed her magnetic iPad case one day, and as she heard the metal magnet click on the case, she had an epiphany: if a shirt opened and closed the same way as her magnetic tablet case, Don’s button problem would be solved. She set to work prototyping.
A New Product Is Born
Maura set out to create a men’s dress shirt that used magnets instead of buttons as fasteners. A former children’s clothing designer, she experimented to find the ideal combination of magnet strength and fabric thickness that would allow Don to easily fasten the shirt and the closure to hold tightly. It took months, but when she finally found the right combination, and sewed the magnets into his shirt, Don loved it. Unfortunately, it took only one cycle through the washing machine for the magnets to corrode. So, she went back to the drawing board, looking for a casing that would protect the magnets from water and detergents but still allow them to hold tightly. When all was said and done, Maura’s design enabled Don to easily put on and take off his shirts independently, but the shirts looked no different from any other traditional style.
Much adaptive clothing has been initially designed as a labor of love, like Maura Horton’s. Maura and many others have created various garments, fasteners and solutions in order to help loved ones living with physical challenges maintain their independence and perform daily tasks that most of us take for granted.
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The Seeds of Invention
Imagine that you’re in a hotel, rushing to get dressed so you can leave for the airport. You put on your shirt, and as you reach for the buttons, your fingers stop working. Something you’ve done every day for decades is suddenly an impossible task.
That’s the situation 48-year-old Don Horton, an assistant football coach for North Carolina State, found himself in after a game in 2008. As the team bus waited outside, he struggled to get dressed as Parkinson’s disease took its first real toll on his independence. Fortunately, quarterback Russell Wilson, who went on to win a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks, was still in the locker room, and he helped his coach button his shirt and make the bus on time.
When Don returned home, his wife, Maura Horton, listened to his account of his first real battle in the fight against Parkinson’s, and saw something she had never seen before on his face, an expression of deep humiliation, fear and sadness. Maura immediately turned to the Internet to find clothing that would get Don through his next away game, scheduled for just a few days later. She quickly learned that adaptive clothing choices were limited, and that they were all positioned for senior citizens, not for vibrant, youthful people who wanted to maintain a sense of style. Maura also found that some of the “solutions” on the market didn’t solve Don’s problem, as shirts with Velcro fasteners weren’t much easier for him to manage. After much fruitless online research, Maura closed her magnetic iPad case one day, and as she heard the metal magnet click on the case, she had an epiphany: if a shirt opened and closed the same way as her magnetic tablet case, Don’s button problem would be solved. She set to work prototyping.
A New Product Is Born
Maura set out to create a men’s dress shirt that used magnets instead of buttons as fasteners. A former children’s clothing designer, she experimented to find the ideal combination of magnet strength and fabric thickness that would allow Don to easily fasten the shirt and the closure to hold tightly. It took months, but when she finally found the right combination, and sewed the magnets into his shirt, Don loved it. Unfortunately, it took only one cycle through the washing machine for the magnets to corrode. So, she went back to the drawing board, looking for a casing that would protect the magnets from water and detergents but still allow them to hold tightly. When all was said and done, Maura’s design enabled Don to easily put on and take off his shirts independently, but the shirts looked no different from any other traditional style.
Much adaptive clothing has been initially designed as a labor of love, like Maura Horton’s. Maura and many others have created various garments, fasteners and solutions in order to help loved ones living with physical challenges maintain their independence and perform daily tasks that most of us take for granted.
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