Overview

Open Style Lab, a 501c(3) non-profit organization, aims to make style accessible to people of all abilities by 2025 through design and technology. The company lives out this mission by following our three aims (1) increasing awareness about the importance of clothing accessibility for people with disabilities, (2) equipping our community with the skills to create accessible clothing and wearable technologies, and (3) developing and distributing designs and technologies that will increase wearable accessibility. We conduct educational programs and perform product development to accomplish these goals. Our flagship educational program runs during the summer from June to August and teams up engineers, designers and occupational therapists with clients who have disabilities. Our summer program is now joined by collaboration classes at the Parsons School of Design in the Academic. This program promotes working with the client through the entire process and together they identify an apparel challenge and create a suitable clothing solution. Program participants have displayed and engaged the public with their innovations at the Boston Museum of Science, the MIT Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. Open Style Lab has been invited to present at events including the White House Fashion Show Celebrating Inclusive Design, Assistive Technology, and Prosthetics, New York Fashion Week, Boston Fashion Week, DisArt Festival, Hacking Arts at MIT, and Better World by Design at Brown University. In 2019, Open Style Lab received the Emerging Designer Award by the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt. The activities that Open Style Lab engages are all guided by the common goal of creating a more beautiful and inclusive world.