Make-A-Wish might be best known for helping seriously ill kids meet Batman, but here’s a very chic, elegant version of the absolutely awesome stuff they do for kids and teens with life-threatening illnesses every damn day. Warning: it will probably still make you cry.
For this year’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Make-A-Wish got together with a bunch of fashion insiders to give a 15-year-old girl called Venessa Harris every fashion-lover’s dream holiday.
Harris is from regional Queensland, and until 2015 had aspirations to be a model – she even won a major modelling competition in Brisbane in that year, scoring a three-year modelling contract and a trip to Paris.
Devastatingly, she was diagnosed that very same month with a rare form of cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma. It affects bones and muscle tissue, and Harris had to turn down her opportunity to crack the fashion industry in order to start treatment.
But now that her health is back up to scratch, Make-A-Wish have sorted out a massive week of fashion world goal-kicking that would make any style enthusiast pinch themselves.
After being flown to Sydney with her mum and sister, she got to visit Alex Perry‘s studio for a meeting and a workshop tour (and a dress. He gave her a fkn ALEX PERRY DRESS). She was chauffeured around in a car with her damn name on it, got to get all dolled up, and had primo seats at the Sass & Bide show at MBFWA.
Then there was a Sass & Bide tour, hanging out with ultra-babe Samantha Harris, a pro photoshoot, and getting to see herself on a giant motherflippin’ billboard at the Macquarie Centre.
It would be enough to make you absolutely incandescent with envy, if it weren’t so bloody sweet. Good on you guys at Make-A-Wish. Taking a still-recovering teen on the fashion trip of a lifetime is an extremely good look.
If you want to get involved with making wishes come true, you can check them out here. In the meantime, I’ll be weeping tears of joy into my knock-off Prada dressing gown.
Image: Supplied.
