For Leah Battalora, walking the runway comes down to a few carefully practiced moves.
Walk. Then pose.
The 31-year-old has participated in the Think Out, Be Light fashion show three times. This year she is sporting, yellow flowy pants with a bright, blue sequined top. She said practice helped her overcome her nerves. When asked how walking the runway makes her feel, her answer was simple.
“Happy,” Battalora said.
That feeling is at the heart of Think Out, Be Light, an inclusive fashion show that brought about 20 models with disabilities to the Women's Building at Fair Park in Dallas. Created over a decade ago, the annual show uses fashion, styling and the runway to give people with disabilities a space to be seen and celebrated.
Leah has global developmental delays and is on the autism spectrum. Carol Battalora, Leah's mother and teacher, said she has watched her daughter become more confident through this experience. Carol teaches daily living skills to students with disabilities at the Notre Dame School of Dallas.
“She's saying, ‘Leah, would you want to enter the stage here or from the side?' She gets to make a decision,” Battalora said. “‘What colors do you like? What kind of music?' You know, so she has to think about it.”
Carol remembers being told her daughter might never tie her shoes or read.
“We had to prove them wrong,” she said.
That motivated Carol to find opportunities for Leah to experience the things other people enjoy.
Fashion is one of them.
“They want to dress up just like everyone else does and be beautiful and get their hair made up and be a model and walk down the runway,” Battalora said.
Feleceia Wilson created Think Out, Be Light after thinking about the future of her daughter, Zoe, who has Down syndrome and is an amputee. Zoe was about 4 years old when the idea for a fashion show came to Wilson.
“I thought about what it would look like and be like in the future for me as a mom and how difficult it might be to see my child being celebrated as she got older,” Wilson said.
Wilson later met Carol Battalora at a Target while Battalora was shopping with a group of students from the Notre Dame School of Dallas. Wilson approached her with the idea. The first show featured about eight young women and drew roughly 30 people at Life in Deep Ellum.
More than a decade later, Think Out, Be Light is now organized through Benton's new nonprofit, the Third Legacy Foundation, which advocates for the disability community.
Wilson said visibility is more than a marketing phrase for families of people with disabilities.
“For your person, your human that you brought into the world, to feel seen and visible and celebrated and like they belong to something where they get a chance to shine and be celebrated,” Wilson said.
The organization hopes to eventually build a monthly cohort where people with disabilities can learn skills ranging from runway walking and makeup to etiquette. Wilson envisions the annual fashion show becoming a type of graduation for participants.
The models are styled by local store owners who volunteered after building a friendship with Wilson. Volunteer Mahiri Takai is a branding architect.
He spent 14 years in the fashion industry and now creates hats and other pieces designed to tell stories.
“Why wouldn't I want to do this?” Takai said.
He said conversations with Wilson drew him to the project and its focus on people whose beauty and stories are not always highlighted.
“You see them put the clothes on and feel really good,” Takai said. “It's something I just like about fashion, period — the transformation space.”
That transformation is not necessarily about becoming someone different, he said. It can happen in the moment someone puts on an item and sees themselves differently.
Carol Battalora sees the impact when the models step in front of a crowd.
“They might not quite know how to walk down that runway,” she said. “But a few practices, and when the crowd gets going, we're going to see them shine and see the light.”
Leah Battalora has her own formula.
Walk. Pose. And be happy.
