April 29, 2026

Transcript

Laurel: For a lot of people, getting dressed in the morning is one of the most ordinary things they do. They don't usually think too much about it - until something makes it hard. A button that won't close. A zipper, you can't reach. Fabric that irritates your skin. For many people, this isn't an inconvenience.

It's a daily barrier.

Fashion is often talked about as luxury, as style, as self-expression, but for millions of people, clothing is the difference between dependence and independence, between dignity and frustration. So what happens when designers start asking a different question?

Not what looks good, but who was this made for?

From Drexel University's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, this is Iterations, a podcast about creativity, design, and the ideas that emerge when disciplines collide. I'm Laurel Hostak Jones. In this episode, how one designer is rethinking fashion as a form of access and why clothing might be one of the most overlooked tools for dignity agency and health.

Nancy Volpe Barringer didn't take the typical route into the fashion industry when she entered the master's program in fashion design at Drexel. She was older than most of the students around her, but that difference turned out to be part of her strength.

Nancy: I think the climate at Drexel and the fashion program - if you allow it - takes you into so many directions or possibilities, and a collaborative experience. I could be in one class and have a question, and I could walk across the hall and have access to the professor on how to do something.

The critiques. They were brutal. There were tears in some of them. They could take a pair of scissors, and if you allowed them, they would cut it in half or they would turn it inside out, and it just opened up the world of possibilities. Some thrived in that - I did, some did not.

Laurel: For some students, that kind of critique can feel devastating. For Nancy, it was liberating.

Nancy: They don't make you live in a box. Maybe it wasn't a formal research program, but again, it was research. Especially in adaptive design, it's unique. You can't just do a boilerplate, you can't just do mass production.

As soon as my first day at Drexel, I said, “I'm at home. I belong here.” The funny part is I forgot that I looked differently. Sometimes I took that to my advantage. I would be mistaken for the person coming in for the critique or students would come up and I could have fun with them.

Laurel: During graduate school, the physical demands of the long studio hours began to show up in Nancy's own body.

Nancy: It took a toll. I mean, I joke around 80 hour weeks, but it took a toll. So by the time I graduated, I did develop, severe arthritis in my neck. I was in physical therapy for two years before Project Runway.

Laurel: She would later make history as the oldest contestant on the long running fashion Competition Series, project Runway at age 64, finishing as a runner up in season 18.

Nancy: And right before I went on the show, they shot me up in two places and pushed me out the door.

Laurel: Later during the pandemic, the physical consequences returned.

Nancy: I became very isolated as a caretaker for three years, and I stopped moving my neck a lot and I wasn't designing.

I could hardly move my neck. The only way I could look to either side was to move my body. Maybe that's why, I think, I am sensitive to the disabled community.

Laurel: That kind of experience can change how you see the world, especially in an industry like fashion, where the standard body is often assumed to be young, able and idealized.

Nancy: I know what it feels like to be excluded, and I don't want anybody to be excluded from, getting to where, what makes them feel good.

Laurel: That realization has reshaped Nancy's work in recent years. She has used fashion shows to center people who rarely see themselves on the runway,

Nancy: I tried to use my fashion to give back to communities. And the one I've done recently was in Fort Lauderdale.

It was for the MS Foundation, where all my models have multiple sclerosis. I did a zoom call with each model and I said, as far as the collection being cohesive, it might not look aesthetically cohesive, but I hope it's cohesive in how it makes you feel.

Laurel: At another runway show. The models were breast cancer survivors, but they were survivors who had made a particular decision.

Nancy: They chose not to have reconstructive surgery. Some of my models had beautiful chest tattoos. They were proud of their scars. They wanted to show off their scars. And so that was a whole different approach of how to find the right garment. I always say that if this is my last runway, so be it. Because I can't imagine doing anything more. Rewarding and, pleasurable than to bring fashion to different communities.

Laurel: And she created The Vault by Volpe Beringer, the first ever luxury designer resale shop offering complimentary adaptive design features to make high-end designer clothing more accessible.

Nancy: Because fashion is empowering and fashion should be accessible to everyone to give you that sense of beauty, power, whatever it is that you need that particular day.

Laurel: The development of adaptive clothing began in the 1950s with the research and innovation of Helen Cookman, who, with Virginia Pope, developed a collection called Functional Fashions. The garments included side zippers, Velcro, and other adaptations to allow people with limited mobility to dress independently.

Cookman and Pope's vision helped inspire generations of designers to move adaptive fashion beyond function. Today, adaptive design is gaining traction across industries, but Nancy believes it doesn't have to require completely separate clothing lines. Sometimes it just requires thinking differently about how clothes are made.

Nancy: if a man goes to buy a suit, they try it on, and they immediately bring a tailor to make it fit. They adjust it. A woman goes to buy something, and it's off the rack, and we're expected to just wear it. Well, if you design something like a men's garment where it's bigger seams or it's not finished at the hemline - all different, options - a garment can be adaptive. So as an individual designer, you can still be, say, designing for the able-bodied community, but design it and construct it so that it can be adapted for somebody with a disability.

Laurel: Instead of designing for an abstract ideal body, Nancy starts with the person their daily experiences. Their sensory needs, their relationship with their own body.

Nancy: Interesting thing about adaptive designing: when I went to the show in Fort Lauderdale, they wanted me to bring examples of my adaptive designs, as well as fit the models in my adaptive designs. And I though, “well, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do a whole line,” and then I start looking at my garments and I'm like… they're already adaptable! Because I don't use buttonholes typically, I have big snaps, or my fabrics are softer. And for people with MS, the one model said her skin is like pins and needles all the time. She needed something soft for her waistband. I had a zipper where instead of having a hook, I put the zipper all the way up and I put a big ring on it. So there's little ways that I just naturally design, being able to adapt to a person's, body. And I didn't even realize that for all the years I've been doing it, until last month when I had to describe it, I went, “oh, this really is adaptable!”

Laurel: Nancy's work also crosses into another field that rarely intersects with fashion: Science. While in school, she entered a global design competition, pairing designers with research scientists.

Nancy: I was paired with a scientist, at the Madam Curie Institute in Paris, and I had to design a look that represented his science, which was epigenetics, oral tolerance.

Laurel: Which meant Nancy had to translate a complex scientific idea into clothing. Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and environmental factors can change the way genes are expressed.

Nancy: I can do business, I can do fashion... Take me to science, and it's another language. We did Pinterest, and I would post things, and he would be trying to break it down, so simple. Oral tolerance, epigenetics, is really how a child develops their immune system based on their environment.

We had a great time. I ended up actually doing one look for an adult and then one for a child as the immune system was being developed. I found a child in Joann's. I think it was the 4th of July weekend, and I'm like, “I need a model.” It just so happened that this little girl was fascinated by the human body and had a place mat with the whole digestive system and all that.

Laurel: Even the materials told the story.

Nancy: I had been learning some felting. So I was going to felt the gut. And when I brought a picture over, she goes, “well, where's the esophagus?” And I can remember going out in front of the URBN Center and picking up dirt and stuff and like felting it into the garment.

So I'm up in Boston, and a scientist comes up after the show and she said, “I can see, epigenetics in your design.” I went, “yay!”

Laurel: For young designers entering the industry, Nancy has one piece of advice.

Nancy: Fashion is passion.

It's a tough industry, and you have to be passionate about it. But there's so many different ways you can impact. Adaptive design. Sustainability. I do zero waste. I don't throw anything out. Find what hits your soul and your heart so that you can, design with passion.

Laurel: The truth is design isn't just about aesthetics. It's about access. It's about dignity. It's about agency and empowerment, and sometimes the smallest design decisions can open an entire world.

-

Iterations is created and produced by me, Laurel Hostak Jones, in partnership with Drexel University's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. Our supervising producer is Brandon Johnson. Production support is generously provided by the Drexel Department of Cinema and Television. Special thanks to Michelle McHugh, Bill McNulty, Karin Kelly, and Joe Marsini.