Victoria Jenkins, the founder of Unhidden, a clothing brand for adaptive wear, faced the formidable Dragon’s on the BBC show Dragon’s Den, shown on 23^rd February 2023. She pitched confidently and with conviction in what must have felt like a daunting moment for her business. Victoria is a garment technologist with 14 years’ experience in the fashion industry and knows first-hand what the industry is missing, having become disabled in her 20s.

Victoria’s brand is to design and manufacture good quality, well designed clothes which are made to suit a wide variety of needs for the disabled community. The ingenious and necessary concept is innovative for a large portion of society, who currently, are unrepresented and lacking in choice in the marketplace. Victoria stated 1 in 5 people are physically disabled in some way, which speaks volumes to the space in the marketplace.

Victoria admitted to the Dragon’s, to use fair wages, good quality fabrics and keep to a versatile, ethical business model, the prices of production were high.  This made the Dragon’s wary to contribute to her business. They were all very sympathetic to her cause and saw the value of her idea. Dragon, Peter Jones, was particularly complimentary and could see there was an opportunity for Victoria to enter more of a consultancy area in fashion to become the voice and agency on adaptive wear for large companies.

Unhidden is moving mountains, having just launched their range at London Fashion Week and appearing on BBC’s The One Show. Within their new ranges, they have also partnered with household brand, Kurt Geiger and popular cult brand, Lucy & Yak. It is incredibly inspiring that larger brands are starting to take notice of Victoria’s mission to fully embrace diversity and inclusivity into the fashion industry in ways which have never been seen before. Victoria is choosing to build her brand under the ethos of ethical and sustainable products; diversity to represent a wide range, including ethnicity, LGBTQ+, variety to suit any size, shape gender and, of course, to support the needs of various disabilities. Her mission is to change society, which is monumental and inspiring.

Ultimately, the Dragon’s did not back Victoria, which highlights the need for more support in areas of design. The fact that products, which represent such a breadth of society, can be seen as not economically viable is an issue with the system of production rather than design revolution and ingenuity. With Unhidden, Victoria is not only attempting to drive innovation, create much needed products for a large section of society, but also to campaign for a marginalised community, raising awareness in issues of diversity and inclusivity, so the hidden become unhidden.

You can view the episode on BBC iPlayer here.