How A Hollywood Stylist Is Helping The Fashion Industry See People With Disabilities As ‘Desirable Fashion Customers’

It was March, and Stephanie Thomas wanted to commemorate Women’s History Month by highlighting strong and fearless women. 

She didn’t want to just highlight any women, though. The fashion stylist who dresses people with disabilities in Hollywood wanted to make sure women with disabilities were not left out of the conversation— something she says happens often. 

Thomas set out to recreate magazine covers of iconic women of color, like Naomi Sims, Jennifer Lopez, Lena Horne, and Selena Quintanilla. She chose women with disabilities to celebrate and represent these BIPOC female trailblazers. In the photos, no wheelchairs or assisted devices were shown, Thomas says, as a way for the public to better see and identify with the models.

This photoshoot is just the latest way Thomas has worked to disrupt the fashion and entertainment industry, and change the way people view disability. Thomas says her journey wasn’t planned, and began almost three decades ago. 

A congenital amputee missing digits on her right hand and feet, Thomas has followed fashion trends for people with disabilities for years.

It all began as a hobby. Then, in 1993, Thomas, who was a college student competing in Miss Kentucky at the time, had a life-changing conversation with her pageant coach. 

“I never buttoned my left cuff on my shirts,” Thomas said. “My coach would say, ‘Why don’t you ever tuck in your shirt? Why don’t you ever button this? And I would look at my hand and say, ‘I don’t button my shirt because I don’t have a right thumb.'”

The conversation encouraged Thomas to more actively research clothing and retail trends for people with disabilities. She set out to help people with disabilities – friends, and even random people on the street – dress, and combat clothing challenges they faced. She also wrote letters to designer brands encouraging them to design with disabilities in mind. 

It was a labor of love until an incident in 2006. Thomas was a radio journalist and DJ in Norfolk, Virginia. She went to buy cat food, and when she walked into the store, she saw a gorgeous, fully-functional trench coat… for cats and dogs. 

“It just pissed me off because as a pet parent, if my cat was down for wearing clothes, I can come into the store and buy more clothing for my cat, or my dog, than I would if I had a child with a seated body type,” Thomas said. “We have f—-ing dressing rooms for wheelchairs, but no clothing on the floor for sitting.”

Thomas launched “The PJ Deejay campaign,” where she wore pajamas for a year, and every day, provided her listeners with a fact about dressing with a disability. At the end of the year, she hosted a fashion show featuring women with and without disabilities.

From there, Thomas went back to school, receiving a second graduate degree in fashion journalism. She continued styling people during her free time, always coming back to a few main questions when looking for clothes: Is the clothing easy to put on and take off? Is it medically safe? Is it fashionable? Those questions eventually became Thomas’s trademarked disability styling system that she continues to use today. 

“I’d go out and find things for people based on my styling system, which I didn’t even know was a styling system,” Thomas said. “I would hold something up and be like, is this going to be easy for them to put on and take off? Will it mess with their body?” 

“I was doing it before I even knew I was doing it.”

In 2010, she launched her first website about dressing with disabilities, where she posted brands and styling advice. Five years later, in 2015, that website would become Cur8able, a place where Thomas shares content curated according to the standards of her styling system. She also shares her insight on the fashion industry and its treatment of disability. 

“The same thing that wasn’t happening back in the day is not happening now,” Thomas explained. “It’s not a design issue, there has just never been a marketplace, and that’s because of ableism and perception of disability.” 

Thomas, who is on her way to publishing a book and textbook about disability in the fashion industry, says there has always been a “mom and pop, underground,” fashion market for disability, but never an established market in the mainstream. In other words, she says, it’s all but impossible to find clothes if you have a seated body type or other disabilities. It’s the reason she created her styling system.

“When I couldn’t find things, that’s when I had to come up with a styling system,” Thomas said, “It bridges the gap between where the fashion industry is and where it has to go.”

Over the years, as discussions around inclusivity in fashion have increased, many clothing companies focused on adaptive clothing have popped up. According to the fashion platform, Lyst searches for adaptive fashion increased by 80 percent in 2019. Although Thomas commends start-up clothing companies including disability apparel in the marketplace, she feels popular, well-known brands also need to think about disability when creating clothing. 

Some have, including UGG and American Eagle; both launched lines of adaptive clothing and apparel accessible to people with both physical and cognitive disabilities. Tommy Hilfiger and Target have also created collections. But Thomas wants designers and companies to create clothing that is more universally designed. 

“From my years of following clothing trends, what I’ve come to find is, as the definition of disability shifts, things begin to shift,” Thomas said. “But the fashion industry is built on exclusivity – that’s the thing.” 

“How does fashion become inclusive when the whole idea of it is exclusive?”

In 2015, Thomas, who had moved to Los Angeles from the east coast to help “shift the culture in the fashion industry,” started professionally taking on clients. She uses her styling system to dress her clients, while also sharing information on her website and social media.

Two of her clients include Tamara Mena, a content creator, model, and actress who also happens to be paralyzed; and Lolo Spencer, who is an actress known for her role in the film, Give Me Liberty, and who was just cast in Mindy Kaling’s HBO Max series, The Sex Lives Of College Girls. Spencer was diagnosed with ALS when she was a pre-teen. That diagnosis has recently come under question, but she says she also has muscular dystrophy. She uses a wheelchair the majority of the time. 

Thomas has styled Spencer for several notable events such as the Film Independent Spirit Awards, Sundance, and The Cannes Film Festival. She has also modeled in several photoshoots hosted by Thomas, including her most recent, recreating celebrity magazine covers. They’ve worked together for the last five years. 

“Ever since learning about Stephanie’s styling system, it has expanded my wardrobe,” Spencer said. “And I know how to look for clothes that fit right on me, versus naturally going towards certain things because I like the way it looks, even though it might not fit, or be as comfortable as it should be.” 

“I think the fashion industry needs to think about universal design first; that’s a term Stephanie taught me. When clothing designers create clothes that are easy for any and everybody to wear, that would be the first step to making clothes inclusive.”

Both Thomas and Mena are “curators” with Thomas’ brand, Cur8able; they share information and their stories on their own platforms and Cur8able’s social media platforms.

“We’re pushing the entertainment industry in different ways, challenging stereotypes,” Mena said. “We all want more disability inclusion and representation.” 

“Stephanie is amazing. She knows how to dress different body types, and she’s really smart about disability because there are many things people don’t understand. For example, zippers can be dangerous. A thick zipper on the spine can create autonomic dysreflexia – so if something is bothering my body, my blood pressure goes up.”  

Social media has been integral for Thomas, her clients, and the push for inclusivity in the fashion industry. And representation in the media of people with disabilities, like Mena and Spencer, is crucial to changing negative perceptions. 

“I’m making them see us. I’m doing that by styling. I’m doing that by taking their weapon and using it against them,” Thomas said. “I’m taking a tool that they created for exclusion and making it as inclusive as possible.” 

Thomas touts universal design and encourages clothing companies and designers to follow steps to make their clothing accessible to all people— regardless of body type or disability. To do so, she says, companies need to think of disability from the beginning of their design process — and do their homework on their company history. Thomas says they need to ask questions like, “Do we hire people with disabilities? How do we talk about disability? Do we just throw a photo of someone with a disability on social media to be “inclusive?” Do we hire disabled models for campaigns? 

Whether or not a company needs to fix its culture depends on the answers to those questions. From there, “buy-in” from the top is crucial, and then companies need to take months to create a plan, address any issues they may have, and research disability culture. 

“They need to figure out how committed they are going to be,” Thomas said. “They need to see people with disabilities as fashion customers…it’s attitudinal. Stop looking at us as if you’re doing us a freaking favor.”

“The attitudinal barrier keeps people from even thinking of disability first design,” she added. 

“To design with disability in mind creates innovation that goes beyond even what I could think of.”

When she isn’t styling clients, Thomas keeps herself busy. She is currently working on what she labels her “first coffee table book,” called Disabling Myths, in partnership with Easterseals, a nonprofit that provides services for people with disabilities. Thomas is an ambassador for the nonprofit. She is also a consultant and teaches courses at a college in Los Angeles. She continues to educate the public on disability in the fashion industry through Cur8able while changing negative perceptions.

“I want the idea of different body types to be normalized. Because if dogs have more clothing designed for their specific body type, and if dogs can have a Dior coat and a Chanel raincoat, that means that someone thought enough of them as a viable fashion customer,” Thomas said.

“We have to say people with disabilities are viable, desirable fashion customers; once people make that decision, that’s it.”