In this four-part series, we meet emerging Asian designers who are championing accessibility, inclusivity and femininity, and looking to make a positive change through fashion. In part one, we get to know Claudia Poh, a Singaporean designer who is reimagining elegant clothing to empower those with limited mobility
On all of Claudia Poh’s designs, fabric cascades elegantly over the wearer’s body, cutting both classic silhouettes and stylishly placed asymmetrical drapes. Look more closely and you’ll find a magnetic belt there, or a ring-shaped zipper here—unusual touches that are less ornamental and more purposeful.
In 2020, Poh founded Werable, a Singaporean adaptive fashion brand that creates clothes designed to accommodate the needs of people with various physical disabilities. The brand’s name is a play on the phrase “we are able”, which encapsulates its mission to marry wearability and agency for its target customer.
At the heart of the enterprise is inclusivity, which, according to Poh, “isn’t binary; it’s a circle that expands”.
“Every effort we make to create accessible products expands our circle to more people,” she says and expand that circle she has, working with occupational therapists to address dressing challenges for those with disabilities. She counts Stroke Support Station among her collaborators—a community organisation dedicated to supporting stroke survivors’ rehabilitation—and has worked with them to produce shirts designed to be put on with one hand.
Poh started her fashion career at Parsons School of Design in New York. It was there that she was challenged to create a winter coat for a friend with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an effect of which was paralysis in her arms. The request set in motion an exciting career in adaptive fashion with a brand that, in Poh’s words, “innovates a future where we may live with grace and dignity”.
Today, the brand offers ready-to-wear pieces and custom garments which are painstakingly designed with a universal matrix, prioritising, among other things, identity and grace, stability and safety, and comfort.
Read more: ‘We can be disabled and beautiful’, says Singaporean model and advocate Zoe Zora