Victoria Jenkins

Victoria Founded Unhidden Clothing in 2017 as a socially responsible adaptive fashion brand for people with disabilities. Victoria has developed a ten piece collection for men and women which addresses as many access considerations as possible, from fastenings to fit, and from construction to fabric. Victoria says she’s tried to consider thought of everything she could!

Victoria studied fashion design and worked as a garment technologist for 14 years, but had never considered or even heard of of adaptive design until 2016 when she met a woman in hospital who was in remission from ovarian cancer. The treatment left her with a number of conditions which really limited the clothes she could wear: she was only able to wear t-shirts and jogging bottoms, and they still didn’t afford her much dignity. She couldn’t dress how she wanted to, whether for her office job, for parties, or for any other occasion. Victoria was shocked to discover – after conducting some initial research from her hospital bed, that there was nothing catering to this woman’s needs.

This was the inspiration and beginning for Unhidden Clothing and Victoria has subsequently gone to win Enterprise Nation’s Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2021, following this chance encounter in hospital seven years ago.

Victoria says:

“It took me a long time even to realise that I am disabled, because of my own misconceptions around what being disabled means, so embracing being disabled has not only meant accepting that I won’t get better, but also finding the pride and joy within it as well.”