Our Story

DKNY designer, Van DiBernardo, left Manhattan believing he was returning home to die. The career that took him to Spain, Italy, France, and Brazil was lost to the debilitating side effects of Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disorder. MS wreaked havoc on the functions that most of us take for granted. To make matters worse, his condition became exacerbated whenever he overheated. His problem became my problem.

 

My name is Luanne DiBernardo, and Van is my brother. Despite our 8 year age difference, Van and I have always been extremely close. When a teenager expressing my own creativity through fashion (clothing, wigs, and makeup), I became a muse for Van, a grade-school boy with an ability for fashion design and illustration. Watching Van suffer from the side effects of MS was difficult; witnessing setbacks because of the heat was unacceptable. It was a problem we could do something about -- and so how two creatives set out to take on a physiological problem: the heat and its negative affect on human performance. 

 

The problem with existing cooling vests is that they looked industrial in appearance.  So into his first remission in 2008, I prompted Van to design a better mousetrap. Our new garment needed to fit better, cool better, and look better -- all while accommodating a frozen technology. After two years of prototyping cooling vests, Van was finally wearing a fashionable cooling vest to maintain his body temperature. Not satisfied, Van's first comment was, "Why should I be the only one to have something this nice?" In that moment, the tables turned. Van had become my muse, and I was hellbent on making his dream of helping others come true.

 

Our journey has hit every brick wall and challenge imaginable. We would learn that few investors are willing to get behind a former filmmaker/copywriter teamed with a former fashion designer with MS. Neither was it politically correct to talk about the heat as a problem in 2010. Thankfully, our manufacturing partner is also an athlete and personally understood the "heat problem" in sports -- he believed in our simple solution to the complex problem and partnered with us in 2019.  We continue to share a passion for improving human endurance and quality of life for anyone striving to improve their game; whether on the athletic field, job site, or backyard. Wherever there is heat, there is Oro Sports. 

A journey in pictures.