J.Crew Said No to Her Idea for Accessible Fashion. Here’s What She’s Doing Now.
In March 2012, Liz Jackson unexplainably fell out of bed. She went to the hospital and was diagnosed with idiopathic neuropathy, an autoimmune condition that affects the nerves in her arms and legs. That was the moment her entire life changed.
“[The diagnosis] led to a tough time in my life, because I came out of the hospital and needed eyeglasses and a cane,” Jackson, now 33, told The Mighty. “What do you do? How do you pick up the pieces and go back about your life even though the most basic way you look has changed?”
After a difficult six months, Jackson slowly began embracing the person she’d become. She bought a bright purple cane to replace the bland, unremarkable one she’d been using. Once she began walking with the new purple cane in public, something interesting began to happen — passersby on the streets stopped asking her what was wrong and telling her to feel better.
“Instead, they were complimenting me and asking where I got [my cane],” Jackson told The Mighty. “It made so many things so much better.”
It was around this time that Jackson visited a J.Crew store in her hometown of New York City, and two things stood out to her. She noticed the retailer sold eyeglass frames, which require a prescription for the lenses, but nothing like a cane, which requires no follow up action with a medical professional after purchase. She also saw an array of colorful T-shirts on display and noted how well her purple cane would have fit in with the color scope.
Jackson reached out to J.Crew in 2014 to ask if they would consider selling canes in their stores and was told “no” without explanation. That was the moment #YesJCrewCane, Jackson’s public campaign to convince retailers like J.Crew to carry fashionable assistive devices like canes, was born...
Read the full story at The Mighty.http://themighty.com/2015/08/j-crew-said-no-to-her-idea-for-accessible-fashion-heres-what-shes-doing-now/
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