Vol. 18, No. 16	Jan. 7, 1999

Consumer studies prof named new ITAA fellow

For Lamb, it is a career highlight. "What made it even more gratifying was that the honor came as a complete surprise, and that the nomination and several letters of recommendation came from my colleagues at Delaware," she said.

Her interest in clothing for persons with disabilities began when Lamb was teaching a class in clothing construction at Georgia Southern College in the '70s and assigned her students to make a piece of clothing for someone else.

One student had a 12-year-old sister with cerebral palsy, who was about to be mainstreamed into the public school. The girl wanted her clothes to blend in with the other children's, and her sister adapted jeans and a denim jacket to meet her needs.

"Altering the patterns made the clothing wearable for the girl. For example, the cuffs on the jacket were widened so that she could slip it on and off more easily. There also was a pull on the zipper and elastic in the waist of the jeans, along with other modifications," Lamb recalled.

What the project also did was to raise Lamb's awareness about the need for clothing, which is both user-friendly and fashionable, for those with special requirements. "It has become a passion for me. I work with designers and teach my students to be inclusive, not exclusive, in terms of clothing," Lamb said.

Lamb's research has a social/ psychological focus in relation to clothing. She and Jo Kallal, consumer studies, have devised three basic aspects of design, which were published in The Clothing and Textile Research Jouirnal in 1992.

First is the functional aspect-how easy a garment is to get on and off, its comfort and kinds of fasteners.

The second aspect is expressive and symbolic. Clothing sends a nonverbal message, and persons with disabilities do not want to be stigmatized by having different clothing, Lamb said.

The third aspect is aesthetic, in terms of color, line and texture.

"The way a person dresses is important not only to the wearer but to people with whom they interact. People like to feel good about themselves and the clothes they wear, and for people with special needs, clothing should be designed for their independence," she said.

Her specialty has taken her overseas to England where she was a scholar in residence at the Disabled Living Foundation in London in the 1980s. "The foundation had a clothing advisory service, and I met people from all over England who were helped by the foundation," she recalled.

During her latest sabbatical in 1994, Lamb was a visiting research fellow at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Greenwich and was involved in disability studies. "This was the other side of the coin," Lamb said. "The professor who headed disability studies was himself disabled and a mover and shaker. He helped me to realize that the social focus is important to people with disabilities, and that experience crystallized my thinking."

Lamb has always loved sewing and working with fabrics-sewing on her grandmother's treadle sewing machine at the age of 9 and winning a contest in ninth grade with an award of $5, which she still has in a frame. She went on from there and made her own clothes while in high school.

With a bachelor's degree in home economics, textiles and clothing from the University of Georgia, she continued her studies and earned a master's degree at the University of Tennessee. There she worked as an assistant in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's textile and clothing lab, which gave her research experience.

After a stint of college teaching, which is when her interest in clothing for persons with disabilities began, she returned to the University of Tennessee for her doctorate and again worked in the agriculture lab.

This time, she was involved in developing clothing for children with disabilities, a continuation of a USDA project that had printed a book on clothing for handicapped homemakers.

"I worked with a physical therapist to develop clothing for kids that would be easier to put on and off. We modified T-shirts so they had larger necks and were made of stretchy, comfortable fabrics in colors the kids themselves wanted. At this time Velcro® was a new product, and we used it. Now it's used for all kinds of clothing, from shoes on up," Lamb said.

Lamb, who joined the UD faculty in 1979, teaches a variety of courses from dress and culture, which looks at fashion from a global viewpoint, to a seminar course on careers, in which alumni come back to UD and talk about their careers. Lamb also was a fellow of the UD Institute to Transform Undergraduate Education, which intensified her interactive learning style of teaching.

She is the coauthor of Fabricwise: Fabric Choice for People with Disabilities and has been active in professional organizations.

-Sue Swyers Moncure