When Adriana Macias graduated
from law school, she found no firm was interested in hiring an attorney
without arms.
So Macias, a 41-year-old Mexican woman who was born without them, began
working as a writer, playwright, motivational speaker and now a fashion
designer who has just launched a new clothing line.
She designed it — as she does nearly everything — with her feet.
She unveiled her debut collection at Fashion Week Mexico last month, where
disabled models strutted the runway — or rolled down it in wheelchairs —
showing off her fall-winter line of 12 flowing, vibrantly colored designs made
so people with disabilities can easily put them on.
She herself uses custom-made clothes that allow her to dress herself using
her feet.
“I’m putting out this clothing line with all these details designed to make
the clothes accessible, very comfortable, very practical, but also very
formal. I wanted (the show) to be inclusive because inclusiveness is a very
important issue,” she told AFP.
“People should not exist for clothes, clothes should exist for people.”
No more prosthetic arms
Macias’s parents taught her from birth to use her feet for the things other
children did with their hands.
Today, she eats, drinks, writes, draws, cooks, cleans and even dresses her
three-year-old daughter with her feet and legs.
Sitting cross-legged on her chair, she gestures with her feet when she
speaks. Sometimes she rests her chin on her toes, which sport rings and nail
polish, or uses them to brush back her long hair.
She used prosthetic arms until she was 20, but had to give them up when the
added weight gave her shoulder problems.
“It was tough going off to university without my prostheses, taking off my
shoes in class to write. It’s considered bad manners to take off your shoes,”
she said with a smile and her usual lively determination.
She thrived at university anyway, earning a law degree, but got a cold
welcome in the professional world.
“No one wanted to hire me,” she said.
“Everybody thought it was weird or shocking that someone would show up at
an office, take their shoes off and apply for work.”
That is when she began writing — she has published three books and a play
— and also working as a motivational speaker and, now, a designer.
She even holds a Guinness world record, for “most birthday candles lit with
the feet in one minute”: 11.(AFP)
Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP
