7th February 2025 • My Family Our Needs

High street clothing giant Primark has launched a clothing range for people with disabilities.

The new range is designed with inclusivity in mind and includes 49 pieces. Each piece is based on the brand’s best-selling items with new adaptations to suit a variety of needs. The range is available in both women’s and men’s wear.

The inclusive range includes magnetic zips on trousers, hidden access points for stomas, insulin pumps or other medical equipment, cropped designs on jumpers and coats to ensure that clothes are easier to put on and take off in a seated position for wheelchair users, larger pockets for equipment, hidden openings for tubes in different areas to suit a variety of medical equipment and trousers with belts attached at a side seam.

The range also includes ultra-soft pyjama sets, loungewear, formal shirts and trousers with hidden elastic waistbands. With accessibility being a key inspiration for this range, prices start as low as £5 with top prices hitting around the £30 mark.

The new line has been designed in collaboration with disabled fashion designer and founder of Unhidden, Victoria Jenkins.

Jenkins said this of her collaboration with the high street retailer: ‘This has taken years of campaigning. I didn’t think we’d see adapted fashion on the high street in my lifetime.’ Jenkins hopes this launch will lead to bigger brands releasing inclusive clothing ranges.

She added, ‘We chose things that we could sell the adapted version at basically the same price as the non-adapted one. That was really important, the affordability’.

Primark’s decision to release this range came after the success of its accessible underwear range last year. The brand held a survey wherein 75% of people surveyed found it difficult to find accessible clothing. 7 out of 10 said they spend more on clothing and 80% expressed how they felt excluded from being able to buy fashionable clothing.

Eliza Rain, a disability activist and fashion vlogger, said, ‘Disabled people deserve to look and feel good, and they deserve to be able to buy their clothes in regular stores at a regular price’.

Primark is not the only high street brand offering accessible clothing. Marks & Spencer has a range for children and post-surgery underwear for individuals with a stoma. Other brands are beginning to release more adaptive and inclusive clothing pieces, but are often more expensive than their original non-inclusive counterparts.

Charlie Magadah-Williams, head of diversity and inclusion at Primark, said, the range was having a ‘ripple effect’ across high street retailers. They added, ‘We’re already thinking about what’s next’.

The accessible range is available in stores now.

In other news, research conducted by the County Councils Network (CCN) and IMPOWER has found that the number of young people being placed in residential homes rather than foster care is increasing.