Making adaptive fashion mainstream

In celebration of 2022 International Women’s Day, Contact sat down with Jessie Sadler, a fashion innovator on a mission to make clothing more inclusive.

Every startup has a story, and for Sadler (MBA ’16), her label Christina Stephens was built upon a deeply personal drive to make apparel more inclusive, adaptive and comfortable for people with disabilities and changing bodies. 

She sat down with Contact to reflect on her time at UQ, her journey from oil and gas to entrepreneurship, and how she’s breaking biases in business and fashion.

What inspired the concept behind your clothing label Christina Stephens? 

Six years ago, my mother and I were shopping on James Street in Fortitude Valley and she tripped and she smashed both of her elbows. As you can imagine, that rendered her immobile. It was very painful and difficult for her to lift her arms to get dressed. When we searched online for clothing for people with temporary disabilities, there wasn't a lot that got our attention and in fact, we were quite underwhelmed.

The first phase of my concept development was post-surgical or recovery garments. But as I spoke to more and more people in the industry and also people with long-term disabilities, there was a clear and glaring need for clothing made for people with long-term disabilities, that have upper-body mobility challenges, dexterity issues, and for quadriplegics who cannot move in their chair to get dressed or need to be dressed on a bed.

Can you tell us about the research and development process you undertook for the brand? 

One of the best things I did during my MBA at UQ was the lean startup challenge. I did a pathetic project. I was so pushed for time and had a new baby and had coursework on top. It was an appalling project that I delivered, but I learned so much along the way. It was really about pivoting.

I know it's an overused word now, but it involved developing a concept, testing, coming back, pivoting, developing the concept further, going out and retesting, coming back, and pivoting until you start getting that concept right. 

I followed that methodology very closely when testing designs, and also listened to customer feedback for our first collection.

The research process was a lot of talking to people. I hadn't worked in the fashion sector before, and I was not familiar with the disability community or the disability sector. Getting out and developing networks and talking to as many people as possible was a must for me in developing the brand.

When did you first launch and how has your line been received since?

We launched right on COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020. And then everything came to a grinding halt. The first few months were really tough. It was hard to cut through the media, noise and fear around the coronavirus. 

Our customer base in the disability sector are considered high-risk people during the pandemic, so getting a new product in front of that customer base was particularly hard. 

We have launched two collections so far and extensions in sizes and colour range within those collections, and the feedback gets better and better. 

We learn a lot more by reaching out to our customers after they've bought something and having a telephone call with them to understand what works, what doesn’t and what they want to see.