The IZ Collection just released its first half of the Fall/Winter 2016 line and designer Izzy Camilleri’s right-hand woman, the fashionable Belle Owen, is excited to talk about many of the new items. Especially, she says, the tunic sweater.

“It’s a bit of an underdog,” says Owen, a wheelchair user with a form of dwarfism. “But it’s very soft and feels very nice on. It’s relaxing and as soon as you get it, it’ll be your favorite sweater.”

Designed for wheelchair users, this sweater is — as fans of the IZ Collection have come to expect — shorter in the back and longer in front. “It’s cool, because you don’t have to keep tugging it down over your lap, it drapes nicely,” says Owen.

Owen, 31, moved from Australia to Toronto in 2014 because of an “uncontrollable impulse” to travel. She landed at IZ, where she is able to put her own formidable fashion sense to work.

The IZ Collection, after all, is adaptive wear solidly based on fashion trends.

Fashionable and Functional

Look at the sailor jeans. “There is a zipper on each side so they open wide in the front, since some customers mentioned wanting better access to the front of their pants,” says Owen. “We looked into current trends and saw there’s a military fashion on runways right now. So these sailor jeans are on trend, only with a seated cut and added functionality for wheelchair users.”

Since this is the fall/winter collection, colors are neutral — grays, deep blues, black and white — and there’s an emphasis on cozy. Plaid shirts, long denim shirts, and a few styles of capes are all part of the collection. “Capes are really big for us,” says Owen. “They are high-fashion and good for functionality, and the pea cape is our next iconic item.”

Currently, the most iconic IZ Collection item is the biker jacket and that has gotten an upgrade, too, as the leather used for it has been updated.

The IZ Collection is even trying to make the lap blanket into a high fashion item. “They are associated with older people or as something you have to settle with using,” says Owen. “But these are designed to wrap around the bottom part of the leg and people who purchase our lap blankets really love them, so we’re trying to push them into the fashion realm.”

And that is, after all, what the IZ Collection is all about: Taking a clothing item, making it functional for wheelchair users, but never losing sight that it also is fashion.

Look for the second half of the IZ Collection’s 2016 Fall/Winter collection on August 29^th.

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