At this year’s NYC Fashion Week, Carrie Hammer made headlines by breaking ranks with her fellow designers and casting “real women” as her models instead of the 5’10” bean-pole professional models you typically see strutting their stuff on the catwalk.

One model in particular got everyone’s attention. Dr. Danielle Sheypuk, a Brooklyn-based clinical psychologist and 2012’s Miss Wheelchair New York, became the first disabled model on the Fashion Week runway.

“I was invited by the designer Carrie Hammer to be in her first runway show, and she used role models as the models on the runway, so they were influential females in the community.” Dr. Sheypuk told FOX411. “I have my Ph.D. in clinical psychology so I’m a psychologist that works with adults, and my daytime job is at a clinic, and I work with individuals with chronic and persistent mental illness.”

“Everyone wants to be stylish, and people with disabilities have been completely ignored by the fashion industry; in the magazines, on the runway, and it doesn’t even make sense because you’re in a wheelchair doesn’t mean you don’t care about the way you look or the clothes you wear,” she said.

She wants to change the image that people have of people with disabilities, which “includes things like, if you have a physical disability you’re not sexy, you’re not glamorous, you’re not stylish.”

“I mean, it’s 2014 and this community we’re educated, we’re professionals, we’re married. We have children. We’re single. We’re dating. We’ve been integrated in a lot of areas except this one area, so I hope to really change that image.”

When asked by Elle magazine if she thinks that using models with disabilities will become a “trend” in the industry, Carrie Hammer responded, “I hope it doesn’t become a “trend” as trends come and go. I hope casting powerful women, disability or no disability, becomes a mainstay in the fashion industry.”

Related:
Disabled People are “Sexy,” Too!