The Runway Belongs to Every Body

The first time I moved onto a runway, I felt the usual rush: lights, music, cameras, and the charged silence before an audience decides what it sees. But beneath the glamour was something deeper. 

As a person with a disability, I knew I was not simply wearing clothes. I was carrying years of assumptions about which bodies belong in fashion and which are expected to remain invisible.

Walking at Ukraine Fashion Week and London Fashion Week has given me some of the most joyful moments of my life. There is joy in the creativity of a designer who sees possibility rather than limitation. 

There is joy in sharing a backstage space with models of different races, ages, sizes, genders, and abilities. There is joy in hearing from someone afterwards who says, “I saw you, and for the first time I could imagine myself there.”

That sentence matters because representation is never merely symbolic. Fashion helps shape the stories society tells about beauty, confidence, success, and desire. When disabled people are absent from campaigns, catwalks, magazines, and design rooms, the message is quietly reinforced that we are outside those stories. 

When we are present only as inspiration, our humanity is reduced in another way. True inclusion allows us to be stylish, ambitious, sensual, complicated, funny, and ordinary.

On the runway, my disability does not disappear, and I do not want it to. It is part of the way I move through the world. What changes is the frame around it. 

Under the lights, a body that may be stared at in the street becomes a body that commands attention on its own terms. That transformation can be powerful, but it should not be rare. Disabled models should not be treated as a seasonal statement or a brave exception. We should be part of fashion’s everyday visual language.

Diversity also makes fashion more sophisticated and intricate. Designers create more intelligently when they consider how different bodies dress, move, sit, fasten, and feel. Adaptive features do not have to look clinical or apologetic; they can be elegant, innovative, and desirable. 

A magnetic closure, an adjustable silhouette, or an accessible shoe can serve function while still expressing personality. Inclusion is not a constraint on creativity. It is an invitation to expand it.

My experiences in Germany and London also reminded me that representation carries particular meaning during difficult times. Fashion can appear frivolous beside war, inequality, or personal struggle, yet clothing is part of identity and dignity. 

To gather, create, and be visible can itself become an act of resilience. On those runways, I felt connected to people who believed beauty could survive uncertainty and that imagination still had a place.

Of course, one model on one runway cannot transform an industry. Progress depends on who is hired, who is promoted, who makes decisions, whose stories are photographed, and whether accessibility exists behind the scenes as well as in front of the camera. Inclusion must reach casting calls, fittings, venues, transport, contracts, and leadership.

Still, I hold onto the joy. Every runway offers a glimpse of what fashion can be when it welcomes the full range of human experience. I do not want applause because I have overcome my body. I want recognition because my body, like every body, can carry beauty, attitude, and art.

That is why each casting decision matters: it can close a familiar door, or open a new one, allowing the next generation to enter fashion without first asking permission to belong fully.

When fashion reflects more of us, it does more than change an image. It changes who is allowed to dream.

Paulina Porwollik is a London-based contemporary dancer, choreographer, model, educator, inclusivity consultant, and disability activist championing limb-difference representation across the arts. Her work spans the UK, Europe, and international platforms, combining performance, advocacy, and consultancy to promote disability rights and equitable access.

Since visiting the Philippines in 2024, she has also been developing work in marine conservation, coral reef rehabilitation, and ecotourism with Build Initiative Foundation Inc.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the author are her own and do not in any way reflect those of Paraluman News.