Aviva Studios to host inclusive fashion show ahead of Disability Awareness Week

An inclusive fashion show comes to Aviva Studios this June, with 16 models set to travel down a specially constructed runway.

Aged 20s-50s, every model is disabled, neurodivergent, or chronically ill, and all will wear adaptive fashion designs from the Manchester label RECONDITION, founded in 2025 by Manchester Metropolitan University fashion graduate Ellie Brown.

Ellie’s eyes were opened to how unaccommodating fashion can be in 2021, when she badly broke her ankle, resulting in her using a wheelchair for several months. Each garment in RECONDITION’s denim-centred collection has been designed with and for disabled people.

Adaptations built into the label’s inclusive designs include front pockets on jeans for wheelchair users, ring-pull zips for people with reduced dexterity, and sleeves with poppers along their full length to accommodate prosthetic limbs or medical equipment, from feeding tubes to insulin pumps.

Ellie’s company now works alongside a co-design group who all have varying lived experience of disability. This ensures that her designs are truly fit for purpose, whether that’s accommodating stoma bags, providing comfort and practicality for wheelchair users, or offering an easier “on and off” experience for people with reduced grip strength or dexterity.

Ellie says that RECONDITION’s first major catwalk show, called Disability Pride Catwalk: A Space for Each Other, is “part performance, part social commentary”, and will “reflect on who fashion is for, how access is built (or denied) and what it means to create space collectively”.

Ellie says: “The Disability Pride Catwalk is a safe space for people to celebrate bodies of all kinds whilst enjoying the atmosphere and experience of a runway show.

“I also hope the event will provoke useful discussions about how fashion – and society as a whole – can take more accountability for inclusivity.”

The purpose-built runway at Aviva Studios features a double-height bar, which is inclusive to wheelchair users and people of short stature and acts as a metaphor for how the built environment enables or disables people.

Aaliyah Rice, 24, from Whitefield, Bury, is one of the models taking part. Diagnosed with ADHD aged 21, the advertising creative signed up after seeing an open casting call on TikTok.

She commented: “Mainstream fashion on a whole is entirely unaccommodating even for an able-bodied person. Things like sizing and fit are generally a nightmare. I can only imagine the extra layer of hell having a physical disability brings to clothes shopping.

“My own personal experience is with clothes that give me sensory issues – things like tags, textures and seams that cause me distress and take my focus away from other things. It makes it more challenging to shop, as most of the clothes that don’t cause me sensory issues aren’t fashionable or stylish and when you don’t feel confident you can’t embrace life the way you want. I’m a strong believer that accessible fashion is fashion for all.”

Research from disability charity Leonard Cheshire found that mainstream fashion in the UK does not meet the needs of three-quarters of disabled people.

Tickets to Disability Pride Catwalk: A Space for Each Other are free, but advance booking is required. Book your spot below