I hear Aaron Rose Philip before I see her. Her exclamations of delight and enthusiasm ricochet around the entrance to model agency Community New York as I arrive. They’re immediately identifiable, even over the bluster of a NYC snowstorm.
Today is the model’s 22nd birthday and she greets me like a close friend arriving for a cheeky pre-party, embracing me like we’ve known each other for years. In some ways we have. This might be the first time we’ve met in person but, as two physically Disabled women embedded in the fashion system, we have long mentored and championed each other from afar.
Barely into her 20s, Philip has already “lived several lives”. She’s a model, who has fronted campaigns for Moschino, Collina Strada and Sephora. She’s an author, who published her first memoir, This Kid Can Fly: It’s About Ability, at 14. “I also happen to be a Black transgender woman and I have quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy,” she says.
It means that the New Yorker, who was born in Antigua, has become a hero for many. “I wanted to be a vessel for others who didn’t see themselves in the [fashion] industry,” she says. In 2018, she became the first Black, transgender and physically Disabled model to be represented by a major modelling agency. In 2021, she closed the Moschino show, making her the first wheelchair-using model to be featured on the runway by a mainstream luxury brand. And, throughout it all, she’s fought for real change from the inside.
Of course, she’s also gorgeous. In pictures, her strong brow bone frames big brown eyes and pillowy lips and, in real life, her beauty’s further heightened by her warm, extroverted energy. She tells me she first wanted to become a model as a teenager growing up in the Bronx. “I developed a real affinity and love for the fashion industry,” she says. Her parents had moved to the US when she was three, with the aim to get her greater access to healthcare for her Cerebral Palsy.
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