“My clients don’t know what they want,” says Lynn Brannelly, “because they don’t know what they can have.”
And that’s because she’s offering something they’ve never had before: personalized tailoring for people with disabilities. Brannelly’s business, Sewn Adaptive, is the nation’s first to specialize in custom fitting and alterations solutions for inclusive apparel. Working from her Los Angeles-based shop, Brannelly serves customers all over the country, helping them optimize their wardrobes for comfort, confidence, and self-expression.
The idea came to her a few years ago, after Brannelly worked on the tailoring team for a Runway of Dreams show. “I was responsible for doing alterations for all of the talent,” she says, “and the majority of the garments still needed further adaptations. It gave me a firsthand view of what the disabled community has to deal with, in that the options are so few. As someone who’s been involved in fashion my entire life, I walked away from that experience knowing I could find a way to really help this community.”
With more than 30 years of styling and design experience and 50 years behind a sewing machine, Brannelly brings a rare blend of old-school craftsmanship and innovative thinking to her projects. She’s spent decades working for Hollywood production companies, tailoring outfits that will look perfect on camera. She has also created custom designs for wheelchair dancer Chelsie Hill and the Rollettes, styled a range of A-list celebrities, and modified athletic kits for world-record-holding athletes and para athletes. Her work has even earned a place in the permanent archive at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History.
What makes Brannelly exceptionally well suited to adaptive fashion might come as a surprise: She’s severely dyslexic. Rather than seeing this form of neurodivergence as a limitation, she calls it her superpower. “It’s one of the things that makes me really good at my job—figuring out how to make things work,” she says. Her dyslexia also gave her an instant connection to the models at the Runway of Dreams show. “I myself have been very closeted with my disability, and I know what it’s like to feel othered,” she says.
After that show, Brannelly invited some of the models back to her shop. “I basically said, ‘Bring any of your clothes that don’t fit, and I will make it work for free, if you’ll let me videotape the process so that I can share with other people how to do these adaptations.’” And with that, Sewn Adaptive was born.
Brannelly’s strives for functional solutions that preserve both dignity and style. She recalls working with a successful actor who believed he’d never be able to wear regular jeans again because of his colostomy bag. “Immediately in my mind, I thought, ‘What if you just put a pocket behind the calf, on the inside, so that it can’t go anywhere?’” Brannelly explains. “I made an invisible zipper in the inseam of the pants, so he could unzip to the knee, empty his bag, and put it back easily. That design gave him easy access, without the worry of his bag slipping down while he was working.”
Brannelly uses the same principles when working with amputees and people with limb differences, to modify garments so they’ll accommodate prosthetics. She reinforces high-wear areas from the inside, extending the life of the garment and ensuring comfort where it’s needed most. That philosophy—How can we make this work, and make it look like everyone else’s clothing?—is central to Brannelly’s design process. It’s also where her decades of experience in costume design come into play.
Virtual fittings are a cornerstone of her business and can be booked online through the Sewn Adaptive website. In a typical session, Brannelly will guide clients through an on-camera fitting process, then discuss what adaptations they’d like. For wheelchair users, she often has them gather any excess fabric and pin it near the area they’d like modified. Once the garment arrives at her shop, Brannelly takes measurements and makes the necessary adjustments.
Her most-requested alteration is for a garment you might have hiding in the back of your closet: skinny jeans. “What usually happens is, someone will send one pair, and we’ll have this exchange, and I’ll do the one pair, and then I send it back,” Brannelly says. “And once they get it back and see how well it fits, then they’re literally like, do it to everything! And then I’ll get 10 pairs!” Brannelly laughs.
In a fashion industry that still largely overlooks disabled bodies, Brannelly’s work is a masterclass in inclusive design—and a call to action. “I absolutely love what I do,” Brannelly says. “Because of my own disability, I really feel like this is the work I am supposed to be doing.”
