Weldun: A New Marketplace for Changing Bodies

From clothing for surgery and recovery to pieces that make dressing easier through injury, pregnancy, disability and aging, Weldun is rethinking how you shop for yourself, or someone you love, without compromising personal style. The marketplace was founded by artist and designer Carly Berlin, who arrived at the idea through her own experience following a prophylactic double mastectomy.

Weldun is building a shopping destination for people navigating physical change, one place to find beautiful, thoughtfully designed products that consider how our bodies actually live and change. Whether shopping for yourself or someone you love, the premise is simple: function and style shouldn’t have to be separate.

The launch brings together brands including Kallmeyer, Another Tomorrow, Mansur Gavriel, Rag & Bone, The Park, STILL HERE, Cecilia, H-O-R-S-E and Underwater Weaving Studio. As Berlin puts it, “What’s a necessity for one person is almost always a convenience for everyone else.”

The Inspiration Behind Weldun

Weldun was founded by artist and designer Carly Berlin, who arrived at the idea through her own experience. Following a prophylactic double mastectomy, she found herself looking for clothing she could wear after surgery that could accommodate what her body needed during recovery without asking her to abandon her personal style.

“When I was recovering from surgery, I was shocked by how few options there were, and that no single place existed to bring beautiful, functional clothing together,” Berlin says. “But what started as frustration became curiosity. The more I talked to other women, the more I realized how many of us had experienced some version of the same thing. The circumstances were different, but the feeling was the same: our bodies had changed, and suddenly getting dressed became harder. I began to notice how our culture treats a changing body as the exception, when it’s actually one of the most inevitable human experiences there is.”

How Weldun Categorizes Functionality

Rather than organizing its marketplace around a diagnosis, disability or life stage, Weldun maps clothing across four functionality categories: Easy On / Easy Off, Sensory-Considered, Flexible Fit, and Healing and Recovery. The categories were developed collaboratively with Weldun’s advisors, accessibility experts and people with a wide range of lived experiences.

Their purpose is to give shoppers more information about what clothing actually does, rather than prescribing who should wear it. As the premise behind Weldun puts it, functionality should not have to exist in a separate fashion universe at all.

This approach reflects a broader idea: what’s a necessity for one person is almost always a convenience for everyone else. A magnetic fastening might give someone with limited dexterity greater independence, and it might also help someone recovering from surgery. A flexible waistband could accommodate a medical device, bloating, pregnancy, menopause, weight fluctuation or simply the fact that a person’s body at 8 a.m. does not necessarily feel exactly the same at 8 p.m.

Brands, Campaign, and Community

The launch brings together brands including Kallmeyer, Another Tomorrow, Mansur Gavriel, Rag & Bone, The Park, STILL HERE, Cecilia, H-O-R-S-E and Underwater Weaving Studio. Many of the pieces were not originally designed or marketed around a particular physical need. Instead, Weldun identifies functionality already present in beautifully designed products and makes it easier for shoppers to find and understand.

Its debut campaign, photographed by Paola Kudacki, similarly avoids presenting one archetype of the Weldun customer, instead featuring six women with different lived experiences, some visible, some hidden, some present from birth and others acquired over time.

Alongside the marketplace, the company has launched Wel Said, its editorial and community platform, with interviews, profiles, expert perspectives, resources and stories about the lived experiences that shape how people move through the world. Its quarterly Weldun Voices series will spotlight women whose lived experiences have influenced culture, beginning with the late Gloria Steinem.