Clothing should adapt to people—not the other way around.

Most clothing is designed for the average person.

But real people aren’t average.

Some people are sensitive to seams, textures, or temperature. Some struggle with buttons, zippers, or restrictive cuts. Some have body proportions that don’t fit standard sizing. Others simply want clothing that works with their lifestyle instead of creating more stress.

Yet most of the fashion industry continues to design for a narrow definition of what people should be, asking individuals to adapt to clothing rather than clothing adapting to them.

AYAMI was created to challenge that idea.

It started with a simple frustration.

Hi, I’m Anne-Marlene, founder of AYAMI.

For most of my life, finding clothing that worked for me felt far more difficult than it should have been.

As an autistic person with ADHD and a limb difference, I often found myself choosing between comfort, practicality, and self-expression. Fabrics could be distracting or uncomfortable. Certain cuts restricted movement. Many garments simply weren’t designed for bodies or needs that differed from the norm.

Over time, I realised I wasn’t alone.

Friends, colleagues, and members of disability, neurodivergent, and chronic illness communities kept describing similar experiences. Different people. Different backgrounds. Different diagnoses.

Yet many of the challenges overlapped.

Someone with sensory sensitivities might need soft fabrics and flat seams.

Someone using a wheelchair might need the same soft fabrics and flat seams, while also benefiting from different garment cuts.

Someone with arthritis might struggle with small buttons.

Someone with ADHD might want clothing that requires little maintenance and reduces decision fatigue.

The more I listened, the more I realised that the problem wasn’t that people were different.

The problem was that fashion wasn’t designed to accommodate human diversity.

Looking beyond labels

Many adaptive clothing brands focus on a specific diagnosis or group.

At AYAMI, we take a different approach.

We focus on needs.

Because people rarely fit neatly into a single category.

A person can be autistic and use a wheelchair. They can be neurodivergent and transgender. They can have chronic pain, sensory sensitivities, and non-standard proportions.

Real people are complex.

Their clothing should be able to support that complexity.

Rather than asking, “What diagnosis does this person have?”, we ask:

What does this person need from their clothing?

An unusual path to fashion

Understanding people’s needs was only half of the challenge. The other half was figuring out how to translate dozens of sometimes conflicting requirements into clothing that actually works.

Before founding AYAMI, I completed a PhD at EPFL in collaboration with MIT and the European Space Agency.

My research focused on developing systems capable of generating complex designs while balancing large numbers of constraints and requirements. Originally, this work was applied to space mission architecture, helping generate and evaluate possible solutions for highly complex missions.

Although fashion and space exploration may seem worlds apart, the underlying challenge is surprisingly similar.

In both cases, there is no single perfect solution.

Every design must balance many different requirements, constraints, preferences, and trade-offs.

Today, I apply the same systems-thinking approach to clothing.

Not to create garments for an “average” person, but to help create clothing that works for real people with real lives, bodies, preferences, and challenges.

Building AYAMI together

AYAMI is still at the beginning of its journey.

We work closely with customers, testers, community organisations, disability advocates, neurodivergent individuals, and people with a wide range of lived experiences.

Their feedback shapes what we create.

Every fabric we test, every design we develop, and every improvement we make helps us move closer to our goal:

A world where people no longer have to choose between comfort, functionality, and self-expression.

Why AYAMI?

AYAMI means:

I am me.

Three simple words.

A reminder that people should not have to change who they are to fit their clothing.

We believe clothing should support people as they are.

Because everyone deserves to feel comfortable, confident, and themselves.

And that’s what we’re building—one garment, one conversation, and one improvement at a time.