Kate Grant: Model With Down Syndrome Who Became a Benefit Ambassador

Originally published 2019-07-22.

In January 2019 the make-up brand Benefit Cosmetics introduced Kate Grant, a 20-year-old model from Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, as one of its brand ambassadors. Grant has Down syndrome, and her appointment was widely reported as a landmark for a beauty industry that has rarely put people with learning disabilities in front of the camera. Her first post for the brand showed her modelling a new eyeliner, and it drew nearly 5,000 likes on Benefit's Instagram account.

Here is who Kate Grant is, how she got there, what the campaign looked like, and why representation in beauty advertising matters to people with disabilities and their families.

Who is Kate Grant?

Grant grew up in Cookstown, a market town in mid-Ulster, and had wanted to work in beauty and modelling for as long as she could remember. Her family has said she set herself the goal of becoming a professional model at a time when almost no one with Down syndrome worked in the field.

She built experience step by step. She was crowned in the Teen Ultimate Beauty of the World pageant, appeared on ITV's daytime programme This Morning, and walked the catwalk at Belfast Fashion Week after her agent, Cathy Martin, gave her the opportunity. By the time Benefit approached her she already had a following of people who had watched her career start.

Grant wearing her sash and crown from the Teen Ultimate Beauty of the World pageant. The title was one of her first public successes and gave her early experience of photo shoots, stage nerves and interviews.

On the runway in a black lace dress, with a Debenhams banner behind her. Catwalk work is a different discipline from photo shoots, and her appearances at Belfast Fashion Week showed she could hold a crowd's attention live.

The Benefit campaign

Benefit, a San Francisco-founded brand sold in more than 2,000 shops across over 30 countries, calls its ambassadors "Wing Women". When it announced Grant, the company said it was "so pleased to have her as one of our Wing Women." She went on to feature in promotional photos and social media posts, starting with the eyeliner shoot.

A campaign close-up shows Grant applying a felt-tip style liner against Benefit's signature soft-pink backdrop. The styling is the same polished treatment the brand gives any of its models, which was much of the point.

Here she holds the eyeliner up to the camera with a broad smile. Product shots like this are the bread and butter of beauty marketing, and appearing in one is a sign of being treated as a working model rather than a novelty.

A studio portrait in a flowing red dress against a dark teal background. Images like this one, outside the make-up campaign, show the range she was building as a fashion model.

How people responded

The reaction online was overwhelmingly warm. Many commenters were parents of children with Down syndrome, who said that seeing someone like their child in a major brand's feed changed what they imagined was possible.

One follower called her stunning and told her she inspires many people, a typical example of the hundreds of supportive messages under her posts.

Another congratulated her on the job and singled out her smile, tagging her own modelling account, @kategrantmodel.

Her mother, Deirdre Grant, told ITV News that Kate "is paving the way for people coming behind her". She added that her daughter would sum herself up in a simple way: "Down's Syndrome does not define me - I am Kate."

A still from a television interview in which Grant tells viewers she wants people to know that "different is amazing". She has used her interviews to talk about confidence and about being judged on ability rather than on a diagnosis.

Down syndrome: the basic facts

Down syndrome is a genetic condition caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, usually present from conception. It is not caused by anything parents did, and it is not an illness to be cured. It typically involves some degree of learning disability and certain physical features, and can come with health conditions such as heart differences, but the range is wide and every person's abilities and personality are their own.

Life expectancy has risen dramatically. In the mid-twentieth century many children with Down syndrome did not reach adulthood; today most people with the condition live into their fifties or sixties, and many work, live semi-independently and have long-term relationships. Better health care and the end of routine institutionalisation account for much of that change.

That progress is one reason visibility matters. When the public only meets people with Down syndrome through medical leaflets, low expectations follow. When they see them in shop windows, on runways and on television, expectations shift.

Was she the first model with Down syndrome?

Grant has often been described as wanting to become "the first" professional model with Down syndrome, and some headlines stated that she was. That is not quite accurate. Other models with the condition were already working around the same time, including Madeline Stuart from Australia, who walked at New York Fashion Week from 2015. Grant's achievement is more specific and still significant: she was among the first people with Down syndrome to be signed as an ambassador by a major international cosmetics brand.

It is also worth being careful with the "inspiration" framing. Grant is a model doing a job she trained and worked for. Treating her campaign as professional work, rather than as a company's act of generosity, is the more respectful reading and probably the one she would prefer.

What the campaign says about beauty advertising

Beauty brands have widened their casting considerably in the past decade, with more skin tones, ages, sizes and disabilities on show. Grant's appointment came in the middle of that shift. One campaign cannot represent everyone with Down syndrome or prove that an industry has removed its barriers, but it gives a real person paid, visible work and shows other young people with disabilities a path that did not seem open before.

For readers, the practical takeaway is simple. Representation is not only a matter for brands. Following, buying from and sharing the work of models with disabilities is part of what keeps such campaigns commercially viable, and part of what makes the next one more likely.

Sources: ITV News, 10 January 2019: Model with Down's syndrome "paving the way for others with disabilities"; video via YouTube (embedded above).