LUCY JONES

Welsh born Lucy Jones is the CEO and founder of FFORA. At 19 years old she moved to the USA to study at Parsons School of Fashion. Upon arriving Jones felt deflated by the wastefulness of Fashion and despite its vast repetition, many communities are still underrepresented by a seemingly exclusive industry. After a conversation with a younger cousin who has cerebral palsy who explained his experience with clothing, he challenged her to consider accessibility into her creations. From that moment on it became a mission to integrate disabled people and disability into the design process from the outset.

Upon graduation in 2015, her thesis ‘Seated Design’ which consisted of a text book of pattern creations won the coveted Parsons’ Womenswear  Designer of the Year, Kering's ‘Empowering Imagination’ award, Forbes 30 Under 30 and an invitation to The White House in 2016  for a “Design for All” conference.

Jones’ systematic design approach then earned her a residency at Eileen Fisher x CFDA to design a collection utilizing post-consumer material alongside two other Parsons grads. Shortly after Jones was an “Innovator in Residence” at XRC Labs, an accelerator in the retail and consumer goods industries sponsored by the Parsons School of Design and Accenture and simultaneously became a professor and co-taught at her alma mater alongside innovative healthwear start-up, Care+Wear to reinvent the Hospital Gown with ‘patient dignity’ at the core. During this time Jones was also commissioned by MAD Museum, MoMA and FIT Museum to create site-specific work. Jones was invited to teach again in early 2021 in the Master’s Fashion Design & Society program with a co-created course “Disability Design Principle”.

In 2017 Jones founded her company FFORA, a fashion lifestyle brand that primarily serves the disability community. Jones is responsible for fundraising, curating and leading a team, establishing go-to-market strategies, subsidiaries and distribution, as well as all R&D and creative, and everything else in between. The first collection launched in 2019 which offered a utility-patented, wheelchair attachable collection, consisting of cupholders, bags and accessories. FFORA won “Design Innovation” from the Accessories Council, lead prize of the CFDA Elaine Gold Launch Pad in 2018 as well as numerous others in the realm of community-led innovation.

Jones believes in the importance of dialogue, reflection and collaboration to push boundaries that lead toward better futures and worlds, and continues to be commissioned for designs & artwork in the realm of innovation. More recently starring in a global Microsoft Ad and Twitch as well as the FFORA design process captured for an Ad with Visa x SNAPCHAT.  Her work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, and more recently on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center.

Jones’ work has been written about in numerous publications and books such as The New York Times, Vogue.com, Business of Fashion, High Snobiety, HypeBae, BBC, CFDA, NPR, Forbes, Buzz Feed, Fast Company, Seventeen Magazine, WWD, Id Vice, Independence Care Systems, AOL online, ITV Wales, Vogue, The Impression, Plan de Ville, Fashionista amongst others.