29-year-old Lauren Nathan-Lane has been modelling since 2018 after first developing mobility issues as the result of post-viral infection that started in her late teens. This is her account, as told to Naomi May, of breaking into the fashion industry, and her thoughts on what more needs to be done in terms of inclusivity. 

“I had a super-stable upbringing. I grew up in Essex with my parents, who are both academics. As a child, I did ballet and Stagecoach, and all those kinds of things. So, I always loved being on stage and I was a confident child, but then I left home when I was 18 to study occupational health at Brunel University, which was when I first got really poorly.

I’d been at university for probably only two months before my symptoms started, so my family started ferrying me back and forth from Essex to west London so I didn’t fall behind, but it didn’t work when I became too unwell. It was hard to go from just being young and with my friends to my life completely changing and being very unwell at 18, but I was lucky that I made a solid group of friends in my first month or so at university who ensured that I didn’t feel left out.

I started using more mobility aids and becoming more visibly disabled in 2018, but at the time I wasn’t seeing representation of young disabled people anywhere, so started following lots more young people who weren’t able-bodied, like me. That was where I first found out about an open casting that Zebedee Management (an agency that represents disabled people and trans and non-binary talent) were hosting.

It’s really difficult when you have post-viral illness, because you never really know what the future holds for you – in the same way that lots of people have become disabled from long Covid. You never know if there’s going to be a breakthrough in treatment or if you’re suddenly going to feel better. I didn’t realise in 2018, when I started using a wheelchair, that I’d still be using one in 2022, so the future’s slightly difficult to gauge.  

I ended up joining Zebedee at the end of 2019, which was just before the pandemic, so a slightly weird time to get into the modelling world. My first job was for Hotter Shoes; my partner drove me to the shoot and I was only there for about 30 minutes and everybody was really lovely. 2020 then was relatively quiet, but things picked up again last year and it’s been a bit of a dream since. 

I found out I’d be walking at London Fashion Week in early 2021; a load of us from Zebedee had been booked without having to attend a casting, they’d kind of just assessed our profiles and decided it would be right. The show was founded in 2021 by Faduma Farah in partnership with independent designer hub Oxford Fashion Studio. Named Faduma’s Fellowship, it began as a £10,000 design competition with six shortlisted entrants and culminated in a runway show designed by the winner, Harriet Eccleston. It was the first collection designed specifically for wheelchair users ever to show at London Fashion Week.  

Harriet came all the way to Essex from Durham with her two assistants to do my fitting, and the show was the following day at Devonshire Square. My partner drove me there because London is not accessible at all for wheelchair users, and as soon as I was there, I was having my hair and make-up done. It was one of those things where you feel like you’re sitting still but everybody around you is moving really, really quickly.

It felt strange because we were the most physically disabled people in the room; the five of us were all wheelchair users and were surrounded by non-wheelchair users, who looked like typical fashion week models. Obviously, we didn’t look like that. We stuck out like a sore thumb and there was a sense of people questioning what we were doing there, but we just had to remind ourselves that we had just as much of a right as everybody else to be there.   

When you’re a visibly disabled person, you get used to people saying strange things to you. You get very used to people asking what happened to you because you’re a young person in a wheelchair; you get very used to people’s everyday ableism that happens every single time you leave the house. The show happened outside, so everything was flat and at waist height, which was great and made everything simple.

It’s hard, though – sometimes you’ll get jobs and you can’t tell whether you’re just the diversity hire that’s there to tick a box. That’s something that non-disabled models don’t have to think about in the same way.  

But equally, representation at all levels is important. When I started using a wheelchair in 2018, I couldn’t see young disabled models out there in shop windows or on catwalks, so it’s important that we are included. But we’re not there yet in terms of representation. I know that lots of the time I’m booked as a diversity hire, but hopefully we will get to a place where disabled models are booked alongside able-bodied models as just a regular thing.

I loved watching this season’s London Fashion Week shows but the lack of disabled representation is so stark – you can’t see any visibly disabled models on any of the catwalks, and that’s not right. I love fashion, I deserve to see myself represented. 

The area of adaptive fashion is small, largely because it’s so complex – in terms of disabilities, we all have different needs from our clothing and how we need our clothes to fit and feel. But Faduma’s Fellowship proved that it can be done and it can feel luxurious. The adjustments that can make clothing accessible for disabled people aren’t huge, but designers don’t seem to think about it because they don’t think about their disabled customers when they’re designing. I wonder how many designers that show at London Fashion Week have ever actually spoken to a disabled person about their different needs.

The next step needs to be more disabled people behind the scenes, too: photographers, make-up artists, hair stylists. We want more disabled people in those jobs as well and we want them made accessible so that people aren’t made to feel like their access is a big deal. They’re just kind of there already.

I’d love to have more work from high-end designers. I’d love them to think a little bit more outside the box so that we’re not just included in high-street campaigns, but also high-end too, because it’s so rare for many of us to be booked onto luxury jobs. I feel like they’re missing out, really. But also, there’s a difference between organically booking diverse models – such as more Black and brown models, more disabled models, more trans models – and simply booking them as a publicity stunt. We need to step it up, so we get to a place where we’re equal and on the same playing field with every other model.  

Images: courtesy of brands, JC Verona, the Oxford Fashion Council.