Pulse
Designing Duo
A design professor and physician team up to create clothing that’s flattering and comfortable for women with osteoporosis.
At first blush, Karen LaBat, Ph.D., and Karen Ryan, M.D., don’t seem to have a great deal in common. But on closer examination, their collaboration seems as fitting as, well, a custom-tailored suit.
LaBat, a professor in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, has spent nearly three decades studying clothing fit and sizing. Using a sophisticated three-dimensional body scanner in the Human Dimensioning Laboratory on the university’s St. Paul campus, LaBat is rendering the tape measure obsolete. The scanner—procured with a National Science Foundation grant—uses special software that in eight seconds produces an image that provides more than 80 body surface measurements.
Ryan is a physician specializing in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Her work with patients who have osteoporosis, as well as her mother’s experience with the disease, led her to LaBat. Together, they’re working to mend a gaping hole in clothing retailing: the lack of adequate apparel for women with osteoporosis.
Fantasy Meets Reality
Ryan became frustrated with what she found on the racks when she took over clothes shopping for her mother, who had become too frail to walk through stores and try on garments. “What I did find didn’t look good. It didn’t fit, and it didn’t meet her standards for comfort and quality,” she explains.
Not having acceptable attire didn’t help her mother’s health, either, Ryan believes. The more trouble she had finding clothes to wear, the less active she was, and the more she stayed home. “It was sort of a downward spiral—inactivity and depressed mood,” Ryan explains. “Inactivity makes osteoporosis worse; exercise generally helps.” The experience led Ryan to alter her career plans.
Although she knew she wanted to be a physician by the time she was 13 years old, Ryan had always sewed. An early childhood fantasy was to be a clothing designer. Inspired by her patients’ and her mother’s needs, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in apparel design at the university in 2002. Her studies led her to LaBat—and to the scanner, which has been used for large anthropometric studies and to develop apparel-sizing methods.
Ryan and LaBat have looked closely at aesthetics and design principles in the context of osteoporosis—seeking design components that might help a person not only feel comfortable but also soften the appearance of posture changes.
“What they [women with the kyphosis or upper-spine curvature] see is a loss of their bustline, the abdominal protruberance,” Ryan says. Her prototype designs incorporate features such as strategically placed horizontal lines, contrasting colors, and below-the-waistline belts to de-emphasize those changes. A hooded jacket, for instance, downplays the kyphosis and elongates the front.
Ryan has enlisted help from one of her patients with osteoporosis. She made the woman several garments to test her design ideas, taking into account the woman’s daily routine, favorite colors, and style preferences.
A Huge Market
Right now, Ryan’s focus is on coming up with a sizing system that doesn’t require measuring individual customers, so that her concept pattern can be mass-produced. “My hope is that we can size it with what a person’s hip size is and how much height she’s lost,” she says.
The potential market for such designs is huge. According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation, the disease affects about 75 million people in the United States, Europe, and Japan. “If you look at the baby boomers, there are many women who will be working to age 70,” Ryan says. “A lot of them are going to have significant posture issues, and they’re going to need professional clothing. [They’ll also] need warm winter coats . . . and they’ll wonder, What do I wear to my granddaughter’s wedding? What do I wear to my grandson’s graduation?”
Ryan, who is now a research associate at the university, earned her design degree in 2006, five years after her mother’s death. Although her mother was “quite invested in” and proud of Ryan’s work as a physician, Ryan believes she’d approve of her second career. “When we were clearing out her house, I counted 400 hangers of clothes she couldn’t really wear anymore because her posture had deteriorated. She was my inspiration, definitely.”—Susan Maas