A Spy in the Camp
Feeling the Impact of Age First-Hand
In May 2019 designer Pattie Moore returned to New York for a BBC Radio 4 documentary.
The programme is presented by her long-time friend Professor Jeremy Myerson, the Helen Hamlyn Professor of Design at the Royal College of Art.
In the programme Pattie looks back 40 years to a daring experiment when she disguised herself as a woman in her 80s and travelled to cities across North America. Her aim was to experience and understand the impact of age first-hand.
Since then Pattie‘s mission has been to champion the need for design to be for everyone of all ages and abilities. She is often referred to as the "Mother of Universal Design”.
In 2019 Pattie was awarded the US Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards for ‘Design Mind’.
“They ran like a pack of dogs. I heard them coming. I heard those sneakered feet on the pavement and then I felt an arm around my throat…”
Industrial designer Pattie Moore recalls being attacked in Harlem. It happened forty years ago, but it’s clear the frightening memories are still with her.
Her assailants thought she was a frail elderly woman in her eighties, but she was, in reality, only 26 years old.
Pattie was disguised as an 85-year-old using prosthetics, make up and costume. With the help of TV make-up artists, she looked the part and her disguise also reduced her hearing, vision and mobility. It was part of her unique experiment from 1979 to 1982 to understand the realities of city life for the elderly.
At the time Pattie was working with leading industrial designer Raymond Loewy. The press called him 'the man who shaped America'. He worked on iconic designs such as the greyhound bus, the first space lab ‘Skylab’ and the new Coca Cola bottle.
In 1980s New York Pattie was in a male dominated, martini-soaked culture. She was the only woman out of 350 designers, architects and engineers but she wasn’t afraid to speak up.
She was struck that by the fact that none of her colleagues seemed to consider the elderly and less able in society in their design work.
I would say, "Can’t we design a refrigerator so it's easier for someone like my grandmother with her arthritis to open the door. What about a little baby born without legs? All I ever heard was, ‘Pattie, we don't design for those people.’ Pattie was well aware of the challenges faced by older people, “I grew up with my grandmother and my grandfather in my home and I saw them struggle, My grandfather was injured in World War I, he couldn't walk, he was in the wheelchair.”
“I said, Mr Loewy, I think we should examine how our elders are managing in a world where young people don't care about them." Loewy gave his blessing and support to the experiment.
Industrial designer Raymond Loewy standing on one of his designs, the Pennsylvania Railroad's S1 steam locomotive.
Industrial designer Raymond Loewy standing on one of his designs, the Pennsylvania Railroad's S1 steam locomotive.
Pattie Moore in Central Park New York in 2019, revisiting sites where 40 years earlier she used to dress up as an 85 year old woman for her design research
Pattie Moore in Central Park New York in 2019, revisiting sites where 40 years earlier she used to dress up as an 85 year old woman for her design research
Pattie in her mid twenties when she worked in New York as an industrial designer for Raymond Loewy
Pattie in her mid twenties when she worked in New York as an industrial designer for Raymond Loewy
"Car of the Future" as conceived by Studebaker's Director of Styling, Raymond Loewy, in the August 1950 issue of Science and Mechanics.The cover art was done by Arthur C. Bade, a staff illustrator for Science and Mechanics from 1944 to 1955
"Car of the Future" as conceived by Studebaker's Director of Styling, Raymond Loewy, in the August 1950 issue of Science and Mechanics.The cover art was done by Arthur C. Bade, a staff illustrator for Science and Mechanics from 1944 to 1955
“I had a friend who worked on Saturday Night Live and she would do the costumes. I said "Could you make me look 85?" and she said "Sure."
Getting into disguise took 4 hours. There was a latex mask, clothes sourced from her grandmother and the thrift shop and prosthetics such as glasses that distorted her vision, padding which made it hard to run or bend and fingers bound up to simulate arthritis.
Pattie would often be in disguise for 20 hours.
“Sometimes I was so exhausted when I got back to where I was staying, I would just collapse in my costume. And the makeup was just not good for my face. My skin started to suffer, especially around the nose and mouth and the skin around the eyes would crack and break.”
“I visited 116 cities and 14 states throughout the US and Canada, I wanted to test out what were the differences from east to west, from north to south, small towns and big cities?”
She experienced great kindnesses and indifference as well as the cruelty of the attack in Harlem.
Now the clothes she once wore are about to be sent off to the Henry Ford Museum. “The dress that was my grandmother's is the dress I was wearing the day I was attacked. It is still painful to look at.”
Pattie created nine different personas from a wealthy woman to a homeless woman to experience environments and personal interactions from the inside – a spy in the camp. “When I was in character as homeless people, I realised if I was truly going to see what it felt like, which was the whole point of the thing, to experience the good and the bad, I would have to be brave enough to stay on the streets for the night.”
The experiment eventually took its toll.
“I did have a very hard period of readjustment coming back full-time to myself. Because I think emotionally I was siding with my elder self. I purportedly got dowdier, more reserved and I got quiet and my attitude changed.”
Nearly four years after beginning her “Elder Empathetic Experiment”, emotionally and physically burnt out by the inequities she had experienced, Pattie hung up her disguise and returned to “normal life”.
A couple of years ago Pattie was seriously injured in a road traffic accident, she now walks with a stick and although only 67 years old she is experiencing some of the infirmity of her previous disguised self. So what are her thoughts of what she wants from later life?
Her reply is typically mischievous. “Now I've worked with all these brilliant young student engineers and they're making robots. I want my robot to be in the form of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack. I want the robot Captain Jack to take care of me. I just see him going around my house and putting me in the swimming pool, "Are you okay now?" And get me a drink with an umbrella in it. I think it'll be great. That's what I want.”
'Designing a World for Everyone' is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 18th November 2019 at 8pm and repeated on Wednesday 20th November at 11am
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