Happily, Ever After

Enthralled as a young boy by the Disney movie, “Cinderella,” Kyle Westphal, BS fashion design ’16, wore gowns, wrapped himself in blankets and twirled endlessly.

The grandson of the late Rainer John “Ray” and Antoinette Westphal, he is also the subject of a documentary, “Let Me Be Me,” which follows his remarkable journey from a young child on the autism spectrum to a “fully emerged” fashion designer.

“I used to see fabric as a way to hide myself, but now it’s become a way for me to show myself,” Westphal says in the film, which was featured at the 2021 DOC NYC festival and won eight Vegas Movie Awards in 2022.

The documentary traces the family’s herculean efforts to help Westphal. When he was born in 1993, autism was not yet recognized as a spectrum of conditions, and confounded parents often placed their children in institutions.

Westphal’s parents turned to a little-known approach called the Son-Rise Program, setting up a special room in their home where they and volunteers immersed themselves in their son’s world, instead of forcing him to adopt “normal” behaviors. Scenes of a young boy and adults wrapped in blankets, spinning and rolling on the floor were memorialized in video snippets that appear throughout the documentary.

Over time, small and large victories occur, as Westphal makes eye contact and chats contentedly with others. He comes to savor the prospect of leaving his special room for good.

“I think by embracing my world and my behaviors, they made it easy to open up,” Westphal says.

Upon “graduating” from the program, Westphal developed friendships with peers and gleaned clues about pop culture and social norms by studying television programs like “Gossip Girl” and “Project Runway.” He led backyard fashion shows for family and neighbors.

By 2011, Westphal was ready to study fashion design at Drexel, where he honed skills worthy of a fairy godmother, conjuring elegant dresses and suits his stylish grandmother could have worn on an Italian piazza. Her effortless grace inspired his senior collection, which he called “Letters to Antoinette.”

“I really wanted to pay homage to her in that way,” he says. “Fashion is something we shared.”

A co-op with Carole Hochman Sleepwear in New York City introduced Westphal to forecasting trends and the business side of fashion.

“The fashion industry is incredibly dynamic, really a perfect blend of art and business,” he says. “There’s always something referenced by the past that’s also being done in a new way. I love all the potential combinations that can happen, like a really fabulous, glamorous smoothie.”

Westphal’s “laser focus” on trends, his passion for fashion and his commitment to diversity are invaluable qualities for a demanding industry, says Roberta Gruber, professor emerita in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

“I’ve never seen him not rise to the occasion,” Gruber says. “He is not afraid.”

After returning to New York shortly before the pandemic, Westphal joined his parents and the film’s directors for press interviews and appearances on film festival and award circuits.

Describing himself as “fully emerged” from the autism spectrum, Westphal says that neither he nor his parents would mistake the Son-Rise Program for a magic wand.

“This is one story about autism, and we hope it brings hope to your story,” Westphal says. “It was a lot of really hard work, all those skills that I built up through the years to be a conversationalist and have friendships and be a person in the world. I honor where I was, but I feel like I’m in a new space now.”

Westphal has returned to the Philadelphia area to plot his next moves. Hoping one day to create his own high-end label, he is exploring opportunities that emerge in the meantime.

One of them, surely, will fit like a glass slipper.