Article
I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first started paying attention to the Met Gala. A pop culture obsessed teenager probably, hungrily leaning into this world so different from my own. A world of couture and lace, sequins and bold colours where fashion felt free and playful, not loaded with dread and shades of rage/sadness/confusion/hurt as it so often was for me.
Back then, I was particularly prickly about people perceiving me, haunted by the ways my body looked and moved differently to others. The clear gap between how clothes fit and fall on someone standing straight vs someone sitting down. That last part is something I still struggle with, thrown into even sharper definition, by the fact that I now sometimes live and work, albeit on a microscale in the public eye.
Red carpet fashion is a different ballgame altogether. Designers definitely aren’t used to dressing bodies like mine.
But if recent events are anything to go by, the tide may well be turning. At last. What a moment.
The night before the Met Gala this year, I made an offhand comment, half joke and half defeated sigh to my younger sister. Something about how 2026 would probably be yet another year of the most visible party in the world, not inviting anyone who looked like me, as a physically disabled woman and wheelchair user. Those stairs don’t exactly scream inclusivity.
I’ve been doing this dance of defeated disappointment for a while now, flinching every time I see that staircase.
A couple of years ago, I even wrote an open letter to Anna Wintour and campaigned heavily on social media trying to change the situation. Now if you’re reading this, thinking ‘For God’s sake, it’s just the rich and famous and a set of stairs’ as so many people have helpfully pointed out in my Instagram comments this week, let me tell you how lucky you are. You’ve never had to question whether people like you belong. Whether you deserve to be seen or exist. Whether you being in a room is going to ruffle feathers. Whether you are allowed to take up space. That’s a privilege.
Those stairs are one of the loudest signifiers in pop culture that says disabled people are not welcome here. Not welcome in our art. Not welcome in our fashion. Not welcome in our wealth and power.
Kept to back entrances – out of sight, out of mind. Say what you will about the Met Gala and its dystopian opulence, but it does serve at least in part as a microcosm of what pop culture is willing to accept and elevate. Who we are willing to make visible in an industry where visibility is currency.
So when I saw Aariana Rose Phillip floating down that red carpet in her powered wheelchair, dressed to the nines in Collina Strada, my heart soared. Finally. Here we are. In front of the world. Taking up space. This could be the beginning of Something, thanks to the tireless advocacy of so many, including Sinead Burke and her company, Tilting the Lens that scoped out an alternate accessible entrance that didn’t compromise on the cameras. Didn’t rob Aariana of her history making moment. Didn’t rob so many people around the world of that golden feeling, Hey, she looks like me. Wow, if she can be in that room, maybe my dreams aren’t too big either. And that feeling, speaking from experience is priceless. The kind of seemingly simple moment that might just change a life.