The 29-year-old Lauren Nathan-Lane has been modeling since 2018, having first developed some motor problems as a result of a viral infection that started in her late teens.
That was the reason, she said, for her “invasion” of the fashion industry and she shared her thoughts on what needs to be done more in terms of inclusion.
“I had an extremely stable upbringing. I grew up in Essex with my parents, who are both academics. As a kid, I used to do ballet and Stagecoach, and all that stuff. “So I always liked to be on stage and I was a confident kid, but then I left home when I was 18 to study at Brunel University when I first got sick.”
“I was at university for about two months before my symptoms started, so my family started taking me from Essex to west London so I would not be left behind, but it did not work when I was very ill. It was difficult to have the social life that would suit my age“But I was lucky to make a steady group of friends in my first month at university who ensured I would not feel unnecessary.”
“I started using more aids to move in 2018, but at that time I did not see any representation of young people with disabilities anywhere, so I started following a lot more young people who had mobility problems, like me. It was there that I first learned about an open casting hosted by Zebedee Management (an agency representing people with disabilities and trans and non-binary people).
“It’s really hard when you have a post-viral illness, because you never know what the future holds – in the same way that many people have acquired long-term illnesses from Covid. You never know if there will be a major breakthrough in treatment or if you will suddenly feel better. “I did not realize in 2018, when I started using a wheelchair, that I would still use it in 2022, so it is a bit difficult to think about the future.”
I finally became a member of the Zebedee office at the end of 2019, which was just before the pandemic, so it was a bit strange to enter the world of modeling. My first job was for Hotter Shoes. My partner took me on set and I was only there for about 30 minutes and everyone was really great. 2020 was relatively quiet, but things came back last year and since then it’s been a bit like a dream.
I learned that I was going to walk to London Fashion Week in early 2021.
Many of us, from Zebedee, had “closed” us without having to attend a casting, they had just evaluated our profiles and decided that it fit. The show was made in 2021 by Faduma Farah in collaboration with the independent design center Oxford Fashion Studio. Named Faduma’s Fellowship, it started as a .000 10,000 prize competition with six entrants on the list and culminated in a catwalk show designed by the winner, Harriet Eccleston. It was the first collection designed specifically for wheelchair users to ever be presented at London Fashion Week.
Harriet came to Essex from Dammam with her two assistants to do my rehearsal, and the show was the next day in Devonshire Square. My partner took me there because Wheelchairs are not accessible to London at all, and as soon as I arrived, I did my hair and makeup. It was one of those things where you feel like you’re sitting still, but everyone around you is moving very, very fast.
I felt weird because we were the people with the most physical disabilities in the room. The five of us were wheelchair users and were surrounded by non-wheelchair users, who looked like typical models of Fashion Week. Obviously, we did not look like that. It seemed like we didn’t fit in and people were questioning what we were doing there, but we just had to remind ourselves that we had the same right as everyone else to be there.
When you are a person with an obvious disability, you are used to being told strange things. You tend to ask people what happened to you because you are a young person in a wheelchair. The show has seemed a bit unfocused in recent episodes, however;
It’s difficult, though – sometimes you’ll get a job and not know it’s a different decision. This is something that models without disabilities do not need to think the same way.
But representation at all levels is equally important.
When I started using a wheelchair in 2018, I could not see young models with disabilities out there in the shop windows or on the catwalks, so it is important to include them. But we are not there yet in terms of representation. I know that many times they “close” me by seeing me as a different species, but I hope that we will reach a point where the disabled models will work together with the other models.
I loved watching London Fashion Week shows, but the lack of representation of people with disabilities is so strong – you can not see models with obvious disabilities on any of the catwalks and this is not correct. I love fashion, I deserve to see myself represented.
The field of adaptive fashion is small, mainly because it is so complex – when it comes to disabilities, we all have different needs from our clothes and how we use our clothes to fit us and feel beautiful. But Faduma’s Fellowship has proven that it can be done and can feel luxurious. The adaptations that can make clothes accessible to people with disabilities are not huge, but designers do not seem to think about it because they do not think about customers with disabilities when designing. I wonder how many designers featured at London Fashion Week have ever spoken to a disabled person about their different needs.
The next step should be more people with disabilities behind the scenes, also: photographers, make-up artists, hairdressers.
We want more people with disabilities in these jobs as well and we want them to be accessible so that people do not feel that access to them is a big deal. I would love to have more work from high fashion designers. I would like them to think a little more outside the box, so that we are not only involved in high-street campaigns, but also in high-end, because it is so rare for many of us to do jobs for big houses. I feel like they are losing, really.
We need to strengthen it, in order to reach a point where we are equal and on the same playing field as any other model.
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