Available in all Zalando markets, the collection includes women’s and men’s clothing as well as footwear, and is part of the company’s commitment to providing a truly inclusive assortment and experience for underrepresented groups by 2025. In parallel, Zalando adds the Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive collection to its offering across nine markets, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. Over 130 styles across menswear, womenswear and kidswear will become available on Zalando, with the first products already live. Tommy Hilfiger is a global lifestyle brand that since 2017 has consistently invested in and produced adaptive fashion, making it an ideal brand to add to the offering as Zalando embarks on its own adaptive journey, Zalando said in a press release. 

With the launch of adaptive fashion, Zalando wants to make a first step and address disabled persons living with impairments of different kinds such as limited mobility and limited dexterity, as well as sensory sensitivity. It also addresses caregivers of kids with disabilities. Styles in the first collections include seated designs for wheelchair use, sensory-friendly fabrications, pieces with easy closures and styles that accommodate prosthetics or bandages. Prior to launching the collections, Zalando conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative customer research across several markets to better understand the experience and needs of disabled customers.

Throughout the creation and design of the Private Labels collection, Zalando has been working with the creative agency All is for All, which specialises in helping brands be truly inclusive and accessible for disabled people. To help disabled people discover, browse and shop Zalando’s adaptive fashion assortment, Zalando launches an adaptive fashion hub, dedicated adaptive collection pages and a flag for identifying adaptive styles. Also here, Zalando was supported and consulted by All is for All throughout the process of developing the customer experience and marketing activation. In order to raise awareness of adaptive fashion, Zalando launches a dedicated marketing campaign ‘Embrace what makes you, you’ representing voices from the disabled community and featuring content created by disabled talent. An accompanying marketing campaign has been created by Zalando Marketing Services (ZMS) for the Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive collection.

“Our vision is to be the Starting Point for Fashion that is welcoming to everyone. We see a gap in the fashion market — finding fashionable adaptive clothing still represents a challenge for disabled people. By launching adaptive collections under our private labels and introducing the Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive collection to our customers, we hope to contribute to solving this challenge and offer a varied selection of stylish adaptive fashion across price and size in one place. We want to learn from the disabled community and inspire our partners, so that together we can continue building a delightful experience for our disabled customers and making fashion even more inclusive,” Sara Diez, VP category women and private labels at Zalando, said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)