Illustrator: Xavier Pueyo

Description

After years of working as an ergotherapist, Tatevik Ghazaryan, IRIS Business incubator Successful Resident, noticed that people with disabilities in Armenia did not have the chance to choose clothes according to their needs and preferences. An idea came to her to start producing clothes adapted for them. By founding “Easy Touch” LLC, Tatevik’s goal is to create multifunctional and fashionable clothes for people with disabilities, promoting their maximum independence and improving the quality of their life.

Context

Easy Touch is the first adaptive fashion brand in Armenia for people with special needs. Tatevik Ghazaryan is one of the successful residents of the 1st Call of applications at the EU funded IRIS Business Incubator who founded Easy Touch. 

“As an ergotherapist, I have been working with people with disabilities for about 10 years. As a practicing specialist, I have seen how people with special needs have difficulty wearing clothes, and do not have the opportunity to choose clothes according to their needs and preferences. It became my dream to allow these people to combine comfort with beauty, to prove and finally break the stereotype that people with disabilities should always adapt to the existing conditions,” Tatevik noted. By having a dream in her mind, she has applied to EU IRIS BI and turned her business idea into concrete practical steps with the knowledge acquired at the IRIS Academy.

At the end, Tatevik mentioned: “I am taking my first steps as an entrepreneur but I am doing my best to master and learn the rules of the business world. And after 10 years, I am sure that I will invite you to our sewing factory, where you will see how multifunctional and fashionable clothes for people with disabilities are created with their own hands.”

Technical details & Operations

EasyTouch is a cloth production, where multifunctional and fashionable clothes are made for people with disabilities and created with their own hands by developing their livelihood. The brand is going to explore disability-friendly clothing as the founder Tatevik thinks that adaptive clothing is the future of the fashion world. Due to limited mobility, the choice of clothing can highly affect the functionality of people with disabilities. Easy touch designs the garments around what parents want for their children, what occupational therapists are asking for, what children are saying they’re most comfortable in.

 

Deployment & Impact

 Fundamentally, we all have the exact basic human needs, one of which is clothing. For many people with disabilities, ready-made clothes are not available and those that they buy from the same shops as we do cause discomfort, from uncomfortable buttons to seams that are chafed in a wheelchair. Easy touch was founded by Tatevik Ghazaryan as the 1st adaptive fashion brand in Armenia which will have a big social impact on Armenian society as well. Tatevik’s goal is to curate, create, and educate the Armenian fashion industry and the Armenian society at large about adaptive clothing.