It’s tripping me out too, but yes, the 2010 holiday season has actually arrived. That means family gatherings, parties and the need to look GOOD are in your future. Check out this awesome outfit.

And the good news? It’s never been easier to look stunning from a wheelchair thanks to adapted clothing companies like LegaWear and AG Apparel. Here’s a fun holiday look that uses clothes from each company (sales & coupon codes galore!).

Click here to watch!

• Buy the The Angela Faux Leather Tiered Skirt (enter coupon code TIFF for any orders you place with AG Apparel to receive free shipping)
• Buy a custom suit from LegaWear and take advantage of their $399 X-Mas sale!

The Aurora Foundation is a non-profit after my heart. Their mission – “To empower young women with disabilities to access their inherent leadership capacities.”  Their sister foundation, disABLED DIVAZ, has an exciting fashion show coming up. They’ve also launched their first ever fashion design competition.

For those of you lucky enough to reside in Tuscon, Arizona, their disABLED DIVAZ fashion show is something you should seriously consider. It is only 9 days away – November 13th, 2010. Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child is even scheduled to appear. She recently founded another cool foundation called I Heart My Girlfriends, which focuses on many things regarding young women and empowerment, including inclusion of women with disabilities. How cool is that? Tickets are $85 and the event will take place at Marriott University Park.  Click here for more details

And if you’re a fashion designer or student looking for a fun challenge that helps others, check this out:

The Aurora Foundation’s 1st Annual Fashion Design Competition

‘Celebrating Beautiful Designs!’™

The Aurora Foundation established ‘Celebrating Beautiful Designs!’™ in 2010 as an exciting event within our 2010 disABLED Divaz Fashion Show ™, ‘Celebrating Beautiful Lives!’, and also as an important advocacy initiative in our foundation.

As an event, ‘Celebrating Beautiful Designs!’™ is a fashion design competition to challenge local fashion designers to re-think their attitudes and beliefs about women with disabilities in the design of fashions. This event aims to elicit trendy, contemporary, and adaptive fashions for women with physical, mobility, and other impairments. Indeed, there are Divaz Models with exceptional adaptive fashions on the runway tonight who will add their dazzling garment to their personal wardrobe!

Beginning late this summer, nine designers began designing and constructing original garments or re-designing and constructing vintage garments for our Divaz Models in dressy, casual, active, and/or specialty styles. On November 6, 2010 five individuals from Tucson’s fashion industry examined the designers creations as the ‘Divine Divaz’ modeled them. Each judge evaluated each garment in one of five categories: Technical, Innovation, Functional/Utility, Relevance, and Overall Presentation. Tonight, Lorraine Rivera announces the results of the judging and awards first, second, and third place honors in both the skilled amateur and the fashion design student categories. The top winners in each category receive $500, $250, and $125, respectively.

‘Celebrating Beautiful Designs!’™ is also an advocacy initiative, for and with women with disabilities, to influence the fashion industry to address this valuable population of women — to see them through the lenses of immeasurable abilities, strengths, and valued resources rather than through the lenses of ‘limitations’ and ‘obstacles’ to the industry’s bottom line.

The fashion industry fails to address the needs and the emotional aspirations of this large segment of women and, instead, dis-ables these women by denying them access to stylish, affordable, adaptive clothing. Presently, the availability of fashionable, adaptive clothing throughout fashion retailers is virtually non-existent.

‘Celebrating Beautiful Designs!’™ educates fashion designers that women and girls with disabilities represent approximately half of the 54+ million people with disabilities — the third largest market segment in the United States. A substantial portion of these women have physical and mobility impairments — such as chronic, degenerative arthritis; paraplegia; quadriplegia; cerebral palsy; and spina bifida to amputations; strokes; and other neurological disorders — that require using adaptive devices such as wheelchairs, canes, walkers, and prosthetics to access their environment.

For more info on both events, visit The Aurora Foundation and disABLED DIVAZ

And even better, add The Aurora Foundation on Facebook!

How do you wear your LegaWear? Fall is in full force, so I decided to bring out my Lega black suit jacket. And you don’t have to wear it formally (I rarely do). For this look, I paired my black jacket with my Marilyn Monroe pink tee, a teal schoolgirl skirt, black leggings, black motorcycle boots, and my versatile black knit hat.

And I love how this jacket fits like a glove; and it should since it was custom-made. I still can’t get over the awesome length of the sleeves. I have crazy long arms and the sleeves hit my wrists at all times, even when my elbows are bent. This may seem insignificant, but subtle details like this make all the difference in seated-fashion. If you’re interested in buying a custom-made suit jacket from LegaWear, you can visit their site here.

LegaWear was founded by famous Swede David Lega, a Paralympian swimmer and wheelchair-user, who believes looking stylish is a universal right. I can’t recommend his clothing enough.

I’ve been doing review videos of clothing from the adaptive fashion label, AG Apparel, for about a month now. Here’s my latest video, featuring a pair of super fashionable pants w/ side zippers for eacy access, and an ivory cotton top w/ detachable sleeves to switch-up the look. Watch now!

Wheelchair fashion, universal fashion, adaptive fashion, whatever you want to call it, Ag Apparel does it right. And their new Ag Blog features videos reviews of their innovative clothes.

Founded by Jordan Silver, Ag features innovative garments from their forward-thinking 3+ way dress (Lucy dress) to a faux brown leather jacket with jersey fabric elements for better ease of movement (Leslie jacket). I love that Ag’s mission is to make being fashion easy no matter what stage of life you‘re in, whether you’re disabled, healing from a surgery, or a desk job all day and still want style/comfort.

A must-see is the Ag Blog, which features video reviews of their clothes. Disability fashion writer Tiffiny Carlson (a wheelchair-user from quadriplegia) is collaborating with A.g, and will be making videos of various items from the Ag closet. She’ll talk about how the clothes look in person, how they feel, and more importantly, how well they really fit.

Coupon codes: As a thanks for checking out the new Ag Blog, enter TIFF on your order to receive free shipping.

Visit Ag Blog and Ag Apparel

For my August, How Do You Wear Your LegaWear blog, I’m highlighting the coolest piece of clothing currently in my closet (other than my reconstructed DARE t-shirt): My superfly white LegaWear jacket (get yours here), complete with a pimptastic PURPLE liner.

What do I love about this jacket other than it’s sheer Miami Vice awesomeness? For starters, since it’s custom-made, the sleeves are really long. And what I found surprising: Even though the fabric is sturdy and not very moveable, as long as the measurements are exact (which they were), a stretch in the fabric isn’t needed to still move fluidly and to remain comfortable for several hrs straight (which I was worried about). So score for that!

I also loved that the sleeves stayed in place if my arms were either straight or bent, and since the jacket length is considerably shortened (to make up for the length you lose when sitting), I was able to wear the jacket all day, with the only comfort issue being the stifling August heat (come on Minnesota WTF?). But still, I felt super badass, heat or no.

And while the color white may scream DANGER to chair-users out (especially if you push yourself), it’s still worth the stress. White can look so good (and on anyone). It pops, it draws attention in a good way, and it’s sexy as hell.

Uses? A white jacket is perfect for summertime (or snobby 1920′s yachting adventures), but it’s also perfect for accessorizing. You can use this jacket as a base and go crazy. Dress it up with a fitted black skirt, a polka dot silk shirt, and a fun skinny belt, or make it casual with a distressed jean skirt, a green relaxed tube top, and cork wedge heels. I wore it with a silk tan embellished tank, dark blue jeggings, gold hoop earrings, and cork wedge heels with white leather straps.

White jackets are a must for every stylish woman, and LegaWear’s version of this wardrobe staple makes it easy for any woman who uses a wheelchair to look just as white-hot as any jacket-laden chica on two legs.

Do I dare wear this jacket after Labor Day? Check back this Fall to find out.

Visit LegaWear

Becoming on expert on adapted fashion, and even caring about fashion in general, wasn’t always my thing.

Read about the journey that brought me to creating Beauty Ability, and well as how the world of adapted fashion is changing (for the better) in the article, Fashion and Disability: Blending style with function, published by the Art Institutes’ InSite online magazine.