Delina Yohannes

My project Reimagining the Runway is a bold, research-driven Major Research Project that challenges the foundations of traditional fashion systems by centering accessibility, identity, and lived experience. Grounded in autoethnography and co-design, this project brings together models, designers, and creatives (particularly those from disabled, BIPOC, and underrepresented communities) to collectively reimagine what the runway can be.

Rather than treating participants as subjects, this work positions them as co-designers of the fashion experience. Through low-fidelity prototyping, interviews and collaborative sessions, participants actively shape every element of the runway. Ranging from lighting and movement to styling, sound, and atmosphere.

This project interrogates how systems of racism, ableism, and exclusion are embedded within fashion while offering an alternative: a runway rooted in care, joy, and collective access. It explores critical questions around who gets to be seen, how bodies are read, and what it means to design with rather than for.

At its core, Reimagining the Runway is both a critique and a celebration. It's reworking fashion as a site of possibility. It envisions a future where runways are not exclusive stages, but inclusive spaces of storytelling, creativity, and belonging.

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Delina is an emerging inclusive designer and researcher at OCAD University whose work centers on reimagining fashion systems through accessibility, identity and lived experience. Her practice explores how race, disability and culture intersect within visual and performative spaces such as the runway.

Her recent project Reimagining the Runway, brings together models, designers, and creatives to co-create an inclusive fashion experience that challenges traditional industry norms and prioritizes agency and community. Through this work, Delina positions participants not just as subjects, but as active designers of their own representation.

Passionate about equity and storytelling, Delina aims to disrupt exclusionary design practices and advocate for fashion as a space of belonging and collective expression.