International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2023
Shown above is Lainie, Tracy, and Lainie's podcast partner Estella at an adaptive fashion runway show. All three are dressed up and smiling brightly.
On December 3, we recognize International Day of Persons with Disabilities. According to the United Nations, “the annual observance of the International Day of Disabled Persons was proclaimed in 1992. It aims to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development, and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.”
As told to the co-lab
Co-lab member and founder of Vollbrecht Adaptive Consulting, Tracy Vollbrecht sat down with Lainie Ishbia, founder of Trend-Able, to discuss what this day means to her.
Tracy Vollbrecht: Lainie, would you mind introducing yourself?
Lainie Ishbia: I'm Lainie Ishbia. I'm 52 years old, I live in Michigan, and I have a neuromuscular condition that's inherited called Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease. It has nothing to do with teeth. It's three doctors' names, Charcot, Marie, and Tooth. It’s really the most common neuromuscular disease inherited that no one's ever heard of. Like many different types of chronic conditions, there are lots of variability and types. I have a very common type of Charcot-Marie-Tooth that affects really only my legs and my fingers, my hands, my fine motor. So I can't do buttons, or I would really struggle to pick up a flat object off a table or the floor. My disabilities are mostly invisible, and I hid them from everyone. In my late 20s, I was given these braces and told, for the rest of your life, you're going to need to wear new balance sneakers, which is funny now that new balance sneakers are totally in right now, but like back then, white new balance sneakers were horrendous. And I was like, no way in hell am I ever going to live my life forever wearing these? What do I do when I go to a wedding? What am I going to do when I want to dress up? For many people, including the orthotists who fit me and doctors, that comes off as really superficial. Like, “What do you mean? This is helping you walk. What does it matter?” But it does matter. When you can't wear things that are cute or that you like, it affects how you carry yourself. It affects how people interact with you, how they relate to you. So I wasn't going to change my own sense of style.
Tracy: So you’re breaking rules, refusing to wear unfashionable shoes with your leg braces, and using your skills and resourcefulness to find cute shoes to wear that work with your leg braces. How did this translate into starting Trend-Able
Lainie: I just started looking at plus size shoes, because I'm like, okay, the brace is supposed to do the work. The braces are what's supposed to help you to walk and to balance and if you are fitted correctly, you don't need special $200 shoes. So I then started playing around with inexpensive shoes at trendy stories and I'm like, okay, well, if I can put them on, like myself and walk comfortably in them, like why wouldn't I buy them?
Fast-forward, after going through like a little midlife shift, I decided I didn't want to practice social work. I didn't necessarily want to do one-on-one counseling. I wanted to do something bigger. A friend suggested I combine my skills to help people with similar clothing related challenges like mine. I've always been someone who is resourceful, but I didn't realize that most people just need a little help. They're not necessarily going to just Google things, or they don't know what to Google a lot of times. I combined all my strengths, knowledge of fashion, wants and style, resourcefulness, and wearing AFOs and having a disability, and then also being a social worker who talked about body image and self-esteem. I combined it all to start a website called Trend-Able. And that was five and a half years ago.
Tracy: So I assume somewhere in there you started to identify more as a person with a disability. Can you share more about identifying as Disabled? And what International Day of Persons with Disabilities means to you?
Lainie: For most of my life, I just was like, I wear leg braces. My whole life, literally until launching this blog, I would never have called myself a person with a disability. When launching Trend-Able, I called it disability, but I didn't really know what that meant until I launched. After launching, all these people who I thought looked good, people who I respected, who were fashionable, started to tell me how they have different types of invisible disabilities themselves. And then from starting Trend-Able, I would see big movements online, like International Day of Disability. I'm looking at these, and it's like, wow, by identifying myself as a disability, I'm actually doing the most good because I'm doing what these people who responded to me did for me. It makes it feel personal. It makes it feel like you're not alone. It also is a connection and a community. Support that comes from knowing there are other people like you. International Day of Persons with Disabilities provides that opportunity to connect with the disability community, which has become a second family to me.
Tracy: The co-lab is a networking group of professionals in branding, retail, design, and marketing, who may or may not have disabilities themselves. Would you share a few tips they should keep in mind on International Day of Persons with Disabilities and all year long?
Lainie: One, there is still a huge market gap, and you would be a fool not to create content for this market. I'm sure many people know, one in four people in the US have a disability. This is the largest minority group in the world and one that most people are likely to join in their lifetime.
Two, assume that people in your audience or whoever you're marketing to or doing work for, assume they have disabilities, whether they're out saying it or not. And so if we work from that idea, then I think automatically your style, your content, your everything is accessible and available to everyone. Assume that people you know and work with have disabilities. Stairs might be an issue or don't hold the meeting on the second floor when it's going to take a person much longer to find that elevator to get to that floor.
Three, I love all these recognition days, weeks, months of people with disabilities, but it's only awesome if whatever you do during that time to educate and inform carries over as part of a company’s mission and part of their DEI goals. A lot of times DEI is covering race, it's covering gender, but disability should be there too, always. These recognition days can't just be a checkbox because then it's not authentic.
