The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2022–2023
Kiyasuku alters ready-made clothes so disabled wearers can keep their own taste
Japan's Kiyasuku is an online service that alters the clothes you chose so your body, not the rack, decides what you wear.
Kiyasuku
What it had to solve
People who are physically challenged due to disabilities or illnesses cannot always choose the clothes they want to wear; they are forced to consider wearability over personal preference every day. KIYASUKU set out to let them keep their own taste.
How it works
People who are physically challenged because of disabilities or illnesses cannot always choose the clothes they want to wear. Forced to consider wearability over personal preference when deciding how to dress each day, they lose the small pleasure of choosing their own look along with the clothes.
KIYASUKU launched as the world's first online service designed to solve that: it alters ready-made clothes to make them easier to wear for a particular body, then sends them back to the user. The wardrobe stays the customer's own — the service changes the garment, not the person's taste.
The people doing the alterations are family carers, including mothers of disabled children who could not take work outside the home. Their practised knack for modifying clothes becomes a paid service through online orders, so the idea creates work for the women who know the problem best.
The service went on to win a D&AD 2023 Future Impact Pencil, and D&AD's awards archive keeps the work as an example of design that expands who fashion is for.
Why it lands
- Altering clothes the customer already chose preserves personal taste instead of replacing it with a disability-specific range.
- An online service removes the awkwardness and cost of finding a tailor who will take on non-standard alterations.
- Family carers already held the needed skill, so recruiting them turned an invisible competence into income.
- Because every body is different, one-to-one alteration beats manufacturing a fixed 'accessible' size.
What it did
The service gave people with physical challenges a way to wear clothes they actually chose, and turned a hidden care skill into paid work. The idea took a D&AD 2023 Future Impact Pencil and is preserved in D&AD's awards archive.
What you can take
When a group cannot use an existing product, do not build them a different one: alter the product they already chose, and let the people closest to the problem do the work.
Since then
Kiyasuku launched in March 2022 as a service of Co-wardrobe, developed with Hakuhodo Kettle, and by 2023 had won a D&AD Future Impact Pencil, ADFEST Gold and a Spikes Asia Silver. The model points beyond accessibility: altering what people already own keeps stories in the clothes while expanding who gets to choose them.
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