Victoria Jenkins: accessibility designer

Everyone has a story. Pain and endless hospital visits led to designer Victoria Jenkins’s eureka entrepreneur moment – creating the adaptive fashion brand, Unhidden. Here she talks about her brand: award-winning universal designs for every body and also her love of Islington. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

The original plan was to interview Victoria Jenkins over coffee at Saint Espresso in the heart of the Angel Centre, but winter stopped us from meeting to hear about the way she’s created stylish, comfortable adaptive wear that works for a huge number of accessibility and health situations with items designed to be used whatever your disability including people using wheelchairs, stomas, Hickman lines or dexterity issues. See the website Unhidden.

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By the time we met her clothes were featuring in Vogue. That’s seriously impressive. See this interview. https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/victoria-jenkins-london-label-unhidden

What’s clear is that there was a definite need: Victoria’s Unhidden trousers are best sellers. “It’s far and away what we sell most of. We have a men’s and women’s version, seated and standard, so that’s technically four trousers (all are £70). I’ve worked on tailoring at a variety of brands and it’s hard to get right, so to get it right for this community was a very proud moment,” says Victoria who studied fashion design at Istituto Marangoni. “It’s Italian-owned, almost like a franchised university. They are in Paris, Milan, Shanghai, Miami and Fashion Street in Whitechapel.”

What’s special for Victoria is that she also had her first London Fashion Week event at the Instituto Marangoni last February (2022) followed by her first debut runway show thanks to partners The Bicester Collection and Kurt Geiger. Since then, her brand, the media coverage and number of buying customers have all taken off – although this is fashion, so nothing is easy, as she explains eloquently on her Instagram posts and Unhidden blog.

At last, we join up via Zoom just as spring has arrived. Wednesday is usually Victoria’s rest day, so today she’s at her home on the sofa in a pristine white T-shirt (well she’s a fashionista!), with a busy bookcase behind her. But like so many people who work restricted hours, today she’s planning to also dip into work tasks. The rest of the week she’s at her office, which is based within Kurt Geiger’s head office in Farringdon.

“I live with chronic pain so pace myself with a rest day in the middle of the week. At home I try and sit and do nothing, not physically moving,” she explains.

The idea of being in so much pain might seem terrible, but Victoria talks about her situation in a matter-of-fact way.  She has “a number of conditions – paralysed stomach, diseased intestines and chronic pain – from a variety of surgeries,” before adding with the smile and humour that peppers her conversation, “it’s a fun house in there.  I refer to it as a ‘gift’ because it’s given me my purpose, Unhidden. Before I was trying to survive in fashion, and I’d given up all attempts of having my own brand, and now I have a brand, and it’s impactful.”

Alongside the popular tops and bottoms, Victoria’s also super proud of ‘the dress from the new collection – which comes in short stature, wheelchair and ambulatory design – so it’s done in three different ways. You can’t tell what I’ve done with it that makes it work and it looks like a nice dress which is great,” looking at this month’s Dazed it is an absolute knock-out, brightly coloured dress with ruffles and chic glamour.

Customers often contact Victoria, but she says, “The feedback can be heart-breaking and sometimes the DMs are very intense. People will say. “I wish you’d been around when my mum was going through chemo and had everything stripped from her’, or just ‘I’m glad you exist.’ I get so many stories like that. There are so many people who didn’t know they had the option, or they didn’t know what to look for.”

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5 places Victoria Jenkins loves in Islington

• All the independent shops especially After Noah, 121 Upper Street. I don’t have kids but I love to look at all the really old school toys and play with the jelly cats. Last time I went in I bought a fluffy lobster – I don’t need a fluffy lobster!
• All the restaurants, La Farola on 101 Upper Street does really good tapas – always get same thing patatas bravas, padron peppers, pork belly (fuet con picos) and meatballs (albondigas de ternera)
• I feel like Islington is a nice little community of people. There are always things going on. I love Islington Square, it’s not busy like Oxford Street, it has a bit more of a community feel.  That said, Upper Street is terrible for access – it’s a question for the shop owners, ‘Do you not want everyone to come into your shop,’ because you are wilfully excluding at this point. You can buy ramps, you don’t have to physically change the building – making your shop accessible would help new parents, people with loads of shopping, travellers, and anyone with a suitcase… Stops no one, helps every one.
• I’m really close to Barnard Park where there’s a coffee stall, Swash & Jones, on Charlotte Terrace, and the owner, Shana, is nice to speak with. Then when I walk home, I look at the fancy houses and pretend that I live in Barnsbury. I don’t have a dog, but I love dogs and there are always loads at the park and I’ve seen people with a cat on a lead. I’d also love to have a cat, but our back garden has very noisy foxes and cubs. I’m from a teeny tiny village, but here foxes wander up the road and I see them all the time.
• I moved to London to go to uni in 2004. I initially rented at Whitechapel, then Crouch End, then Old Street. I slowly worked my way up to Angel, and have been in this basement flat for 7.5 years. It’s a lovely flat with a very nice landlord because we couldn’t afford now to live anywhere else in Angel if we wanted to move out!

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Wear it well
Victoria is very happy to wear her own designs. Generally, the range is a bit more formal because, “leisure wear is adaptive anyway, so I don’t often lounge about at home in Unhidden apart from my jersey culottes. They are really nice, made from heavyweight jersey, super stretchy, with nice pockets, comfy and look good” at this point she laughs and rolls her eyes adding, “well I think they look good, and I designed them. I’ve got them in teal but we are bringing them out in mustard, black and royal blue. I wore the blue to a photo shoot on Monday.”

The idea came about from a hospital visit to UCLH, one of many stays for Victoria in 2016. “Another woman on the ward had had ovarian cancer, but as is often the case she had been left a number of lifelong conditions by the treatment. She had two stomas and a line for her arm and one in her chest. It was her who made me think about adaptive clothing because she knew I worked in fashion and she said ‘I can’t wear what I want to – I can’t dress how I want to at work or at home’. Even in the hospital she had to take all of her clothes off, so doctors could access various bits of her body. I just thought I’m sure we could be doing better than this, so I said ‘someone should be doing it, it’s so obvious now you say it’. I started to research but in 2016, there was not very much adaptive fashion or what there was all looked very medical, wipe-clean and elderly or like hospital wear. They were not made from the perspective of the people wearing the clothes, it was very much from the carer perspective – wipe clean.”

So the idea fermented, and soon Victoria realised that, “I’ll do it.”

Her designs might have invisible zips at each side and elasticated waistband or be adjustable to allow for bloating or colostomy bags.

Unhidden is as much about accessibility as sustainability, and also makes very clear on the website how much the items cost to make – everything is transparent (see the price breakdown for the ambulatory trousers).

“I’ve chased awareness and credibility because what I do is so very needed,” she explains. And that’s already led to a number of partnerships and collaborations with brands. But the next step is working with an investor and driving sales to start to buy stock. “Up to now it’s been made to order, but people don’t want to wait two months.”

The plan is to dispatch from a fulfilment centre in the north. She’s also planning to make suits and a range of adaptive clothing for kids.

Challenges
For now her brand is online but bringing Unhidden to the shops has unique challenges. “Once I’ve got stock there are places that are prepared to sell it – but then I have the issue of is the shop accessible? Is the changing room accessible? To be truly accessible it would need a hoist and medically trained staff. How many shops have those? It’s very difficult: that’s the long-term goal to have a stand-alone shop that has all those things. If I want to be in a physical retail space, people are probably not going to be able to try clothes on within the shop space because it’s not accessible unless I ‘build it myself.” she explains.

With more than 1 billion people globally with some form of disability it’s incredible that so little clothing choice is around. How wonderful that Victoria, living and working in Islington has made it her mission to make fabulous and comfy clothing for people who really don’t want to spend time only in PJs, or in the sort of clothing that has to be totally removed for all sorts of personal care moments leaving the wearer vulnerable, cold and even traumatised. Thank you Victoria.

• Unhidden is made to order so search the website for whatever you need. Items are designed to be used whatever your disability including people using wheelchairs, stomas, Hickman lines or dexterity issues. https://unhiddenclothing.com/
• You can also rent pieces via the Loanhood app which supports the circular economy.
• Insta @Unhidden.uk
• You can also follow Victoria on Insta @VictoriaAnnOfficial

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola