While being trans, Black, and disabled has informed the model Aaron Rose Philip’s identity, her attitude has made her an indefinable force in fashion.
A recent date with Aaron Rose Philip (pronounced A-ron) couldn’t have started in a more New York way—the kind that throws a curveball because… why not? It happened on a cold winter morning, with icy gusts of wind pulsing so powerfully around the city’s blocks they could slice one’s cheeks off. Just as we approached the outlet of the New American brasserie chain The Smith that Philip had suggested for our interview because of its accessibility, an adjacent office building was evacuated. Chaos ensued as hundreds of people flooded onto the sidewalk, blocking the entrance to the restaurant.
While an inconvenience like that might break the resolve of even the most determined New Yorker, Philip—the rising star who epitomizes intersectionality in fashion as a trans Black model with a disability—has spent a lifetime taking on everyday hurdles with grace. Though reluctant to be defined, Philip is, without a doubt, trailblazing representation in fashion and beauty, her drive fueled by the lack of visibility for models like her, especially at the luxury end of the industry.
Navigating through the crowds in her wheelchair, she makes it to the table, then exhales. “I’d totally get a mimosa now,” she says, her warm smile infectious. (She didn’t.)
Philip may downplay her accomplishments, but the 23-year-old already has an impressive portfolio of work that must be the envy of many models. It includes the covers of British Vogue, PAPER magazine, which Naomi Campbell interviewed her for, and Perfect. She starred in a groundbreaking—and stunning—campaign for Moschino shot by Luigi & Iango, and has done work for Sephora, Dove, and more. Miley Cyrus cast Philip to star in the video for her hit song “Mother’s Daughter,” and Donatella Versace, who connected with Philip through Instagram, invited her to attend the Versace show and Icons party in Milan last September, a memorable night during which she and Anne Hathaway became firm friends.
Hillary Taymour, the founder and designer of Collina Strada and a pioneer of conscious fashion who has built a community of uber-cool fashion people, asked Philip to appear in her runway shows, including her most recent one in February. The two also collaborated for the recent Women Dressing Women exhibition at The Met Museum’s Costume Institute. It featured a mannequin version of Philip in a wheelchair wearing a custom Collina Strada look. If that’s not breaking barriers, what is? One can chalk all of this up to Philip’s inspiring character. “Aaron Rose,” Taymour says, “is someone who can light up a room. Her energy is truly so special and magical.”
This energy can be traced back to the model’s early life. Philip, born in 2001 in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, was diagnosed with quadriplegic cerebral palsy when she was two, leading her parents to search out better health and education opportunities. “Antigua is the place of my heart,” she says, “but especially when I was born, it did not have the resources that were appropriate for someone like me who needed the care that I needed, being disabled.” London was considered, but the family ultimately settled for New York City, specifically the Bronx, when Philip was three. “And that,” she says, “is when I started my life here.”
“My upbringing was a lot of things. It was beautiful. It was hard. It was complicated. Between the surgeries, therapy, learning how to function, and trying to figure out how I can do my best.”
Much of Philip’s childhood took place in medical care and between invasive surgeries on her legs and hips. Yet she’s not one to see the glass half-empty. Quite the contrary. Those privileged enough to spend time with the model will confirm that she’s a full-glass gal. “Being a disabled kid with a low-income immigrant father and mother doing the absolute best that they can was an uphill battle,” Philip recalls. “It was never easy, but there was a lot of beauty in how we lived.”
Notions of positivity manifest themselves in the way she speaks of her childhood, from the high points to the darker moments, when, for example, she was left feeling isolated and sad after other kids bullied her for her disability in school playgrounds. “My upbringing was a lot of things,” she adds. “It was beautiful. It was hard. It was complicated. Between the surgeries, therapy, learning how to function, and trying to figure out how I can do my best, I endured much struggle. I faced a lot of ostracism and felt like an outsider because the world itself is still barely ready to deal with disabled people.”
At 13, her experiences encouraged her to publish her memoir with HarperCollins, This Kid Can Fly. As she put it, her first foray into writing was “about ability, not disability.” Soon after, Philip began traversing the internet, first through gaming and then fashion. That’s when her trajectory shifted and, perhaps for the first time, she discovered a sense of community and belonging. “The internet became this place where I could really indulge in my interests,” she says. “I already had a passion for writing and art and media. I loved bright, colorful, cute, sweet things, and I loved finding those on the internet. I made the switch from feeling uncomfortable in real life to finding community on the internet.” It started with Tumblr and was followed by Instagram.
Both became powerful tools that have provided Philip with a form of escapism while allowing her to refine and articulate who she is as a person in ways she hadn’t been able to before. “I was trying to assert and develop my personal identity,” she says. “I knew I was trans, but I didn’t have the language or tools for that. Social media became my tool and way of expressing myself. I discovered my love for this beautiful world we call fashion. I was so taken by this beauty, these beautiful clothes, and these beautiful models. ‘I love this,’ I thought to myself, ‘but I don’t see anyone who looks like me.’”
“I knew I was trans, but I didn’t have the language or tools for that. Social media became my tool and way of expressing myself. I discovered my love for this beautiful world we call fashion.”
Two years later, and now in a New York City public high school, Philip was ready for her fashion close-up. She knew she wanted to be a model but didn’t have a clear pathway to pursue the goal. During lunch breaks, she and her aide started staging fashion shoots against a white wall in the school courtyard, with the model styling her hair and handpicking the clothes for each captured moment.
“I started to tweet about wanting to be a model,” Philip recalls. “I started marketing myself on social media. ‘Hi, I’m Aaron Philip’—at the time I went by Aaron Philip—‘I’m 16 years old. I am an aspiring disabled model, creative, and artist. The fashion industry has not seen anyone like me, but I would like to change that. I would like to be this model.’ The tweets went mega-viral, with 200,000 retweets and likes overnight.”
Her friend Hunter Schafer, pre-Euphoria fame, helped her along the way. “We’re both trans sisters and love each other so very much,” Philip says. “Hunter was working as a model at Elite Model Management and she was getting some nice jobs and bookings. But she consciously knew of the inequities and how it seemed that white trans models were getting a platform but Black girls like me didn’t. She introduced me to Richie Keo at Elite when I was 17 [Keo now represents Philip through Community New York]. I went into the agency and the first thing my agent said to me was, ‘Wow, we’ve never seen anyone like you before.’”
Elite signed her, and her high-fashion modeling career got a jump start when Jeremy Scott, then creative director at Moschino, took notice. “He really believed in me. He understood me and what I wanted to do in fashion,” Philip says. As Scott recalls, he had seen clips of the model and she immediately grabbed his attention with her “effervescent personality and deep love of fashion, and much like myself, her fearlessness to have fun with fashion and to experiment and turn looks… Later getting to know Aaron [Rose] herself and hearing her speak about pop culture references as diverse as Nineties sitcoms and as nuanced as look numbers from decade-past fashion shows… from cartoons to couture she spoke my language to a tee,” he says. “I never had to explain anything I was saying to her because she knew it—fundamentally in her creative soul and in her wildly detailed filing cabinet of a brain for pop-cultural references. It was a meeting of the minds, hearts, and souls.”
“Have conversations in the boardrooms about accessibility and about diversity in a way that’s genuine. What happened to transgender Black girls? What happened to disabled models? There needs to be change at every level.”
Despite Philip’s success, there is still much on her to-do list, including working a full season doing shows in multiple fashion capitals. “We set this example that I can absolutely do this with Collina Strada and Moschino,” she notes. “I can do it with Gigi, Imaan Hammam, Hunter, Bella… We share the same space. They’re all my friends. We hang out. We know our love for one another. As women, as sisters, as fellow models, we share a vision and an industry together.”
Can fashion do even better when it comes to representation? You bet. “Take the chance on making things accessible,” Philip says. “Have conversations in the boardrooms about accessibility and about diversity in a way that’s genuine. What happened to transgender Black girls? What happened to disabled models? There needs to be change at every level.”
It becomes evident over the course of this cold morning that Philip’s dream is less about being self-serving than it is about being altruistic. “I understood from a young age that the industry just wasn’t seeing people like me,” she says. “I’m not doing this for me. Whether disabled or Black and trans, I’m doing it for my whole community.”
All clothes and accessories by Versace. All photos by Bismuth. From Mission’s Expression issue, guest edited by Donatella Versace.
