Young adaptive clothing line hosts first Disability Pride Catwalk in Manchester

Disabled models will travel the runway at Aviva Studios on Saturday 27 June 2026 ahead of Disability Pride Month.

The most inclusive fashion show that’s ever been staged in Manchester is coming to the city ahead of Disability Awareness Month.

Sixteen models – female, non binary and male – will travel down a specially constructed runway at Manchester’s Aviva Studios.

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

Brown’s eyes opened to how unaccommodating fashion can be in 2021, when she badly broke her ankle. This resulted 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.
• Sleeves with poppers along their full length to help accommodate prosthetic limbs or medical equipment, from feeding tubes to insulin pumps.

Brown’s Manchester city centre based company now works alongside a co-design group who all have varying lived experience of disability. This ensures that her designs truly do the job, whether that’s:

• Accommodating stoma bags.
• Providing comfort and practicality for wheelchair users.
• Offering an easier “on and off” experience for people with reduced grip strength or dexterity.

‘Disability Pride Catwalk’ will show ‘accessible fashion is fashion for all’

Aaliyah Rice, 24, from Bury, Greater Manchester, 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 said she thought it would be:

such a fun experience and a chance to meet like-minded people.

Rice added:

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.

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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.

The label’s first catwalk collection includes the popular dark blue denim Reconditioned Jean, which is already on sale and debuts a number of new adaptive designs. These include a denim miniskirt, a dress, a jumpsuit, a top and a further new cut of jeans.

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

According to government figures, a quarter of people in the UK have a disability – that’s 16.8 million people. And in state pension aged people, the figure rises to almost half (45%).

Brown 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.

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.

Brown said:

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.

Disability Pride Catwalk: A Space for Each Other

Saturday 27 June 2026 6-8pm

The Undercroft, Aviva Studios, Water Street, Manchester, M3 4JQ

FREE

Featured image supplied

By The Canary

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