COLUMBUS, Ohio– Chelsea Funk spent 2018 designing clothes for children with various disabilities and ended her time at the Columbus College of Art and Design with the school's first adaptive runway show. She says it was a way to open people's eyes to those who had limitations.

An Ohio clothing designer fresh out of college is already making her mark in the fashion industry. When 23-year-old Chelsea Funk went to college, she knew that she wanted to be a fashion designer. She wanted to help people and make a difference in their lives. But how she could do that would remain a mystery until her junior year.

It doesn't take Chelsea Funk long to stitch up a hot pink hoodie from scratch on her sewing machine. She says, "Clothes were something I loved from such a young age. Barbie dolls, baby dolls, I was all about it." As a spool of thread races through the needle, the designer says she's always loved fashion, but wearing the latest trends herself, had always been challenging. "I couldn't wear the cute denim jacket or leather jackets because I'd have to roll them up so far that it would be uncomfortable."

Uncomfortable and not very flattering, she says. She says her peers would say things like, "It's well you know your clothes obviously aren't from the mall or you know, you have to wear a sweatshirt whereas I can wear a leather jacket. That was a little hard."

Funk was born with a rare condition called Amniotic Band Syndrome, which caused her left arm not to form below her elbow fully. As many as one in 15 thousand children in the US are born with this condition each year. But Chelsea hasn't allowed that to stop her. Piecing together the rest of a pattern with a few straight pins, she says once she learned how to sew from her big sister, things took off from there. "So I would get little dollar travel kits at the you know the grocery store, and I would rip stuff up and cut the legs off my pants and sew 'em onto other things - Drove my mom crazy cause I think that whole year I didn't have any actual long pants;" But that didn't matter. All she knew was that she wanted to help people, take care of people, and make clothes for people who didn't have them. By her junior year in college, she realized just how she could do that. She says, "at that time is when Tommy Hilfiger started his adaptive line, and people were like oh my god this is a real thing. You aren't just making it up. And I'm like no, this is a need. And this is white space in the market. And this is how I can help."

She spent the next year designing clothes for children with various disabilities, ending it all with the school's first adaptive runway show in 2018. She says it was a way to open people's eyes to those who had limitations.

Now a year later, she's working on her next adaptive clothing line, customizable coats, and jackets. "So this year I'm going to be featuring magnetic zippers, which are so cool. So the base of it instead of having two prongs - it's a magnet. So, it automatically connects and wants to come together, and all you have to do is pull it up." "All the sleeves are customizable. You know in case you don't have a full arm-length you know or whatever it may be. Pockets can be put in several different places. Side seams can be all the way down like a traditional coat, where they can be left open to accommodate a sitting position."

The goal is to make things easier for those with disabilities, parents with little kids, and aging adults. Although Funk is still early in her career, she hopes her new clothing company Pit and Pug will become an international household name.