KIEV: When Alexandra Kutas headlined a recent fashion show in Kiev it was not just a personal dream come true but also a victory for disabled people in her homeland Ukraine.

Wearing a long, black dress, she wowed the crowd as she was carried across the catwalk on a wooden throne by four trim men, becoming the first model with a disability to take the lead in a high-profile event in the country.

“I had the idea that I wanted to do a catwalk and show that a girl in a wheelchair can be perceived as a first-class professional”, she said. For 23-year-old Kutas, it was the latest stage in a long journey.

In a wheelchair since birth due to a spinal cord injury, she had struggled for years to make it as a model in the ex-Soviet state where disabled people all too often get left behind.

Kutas sent letters to modelling agencies — but the response was always the same polite refusals.

“They told me that I am very pretty, but they do not know how to promote me because the market is still not ready for this”, says Kutas.

Kutas was born in Dnipro city, in the east of Ukraine, and went to an ordinary school. It was a bold step to take in 2000, when inclusive education was rare.

There were no ramps or elevators for special needs children in schools, so Kutas’s father or grandfather had to carry her up the stairs so that she could study with the other children. “Yes, it was difficult, but it is generally difficult to be a person with limited physical mobility in our country. Everyone knows that,” Kutas says.

In 2012, Kutas was having lunch in a cafe when a photographer approached her and asked if she wanted to become a model.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2017