North Richland Hills girl with rare childhood cancer walks the runway at New York Fashion Week

An 11-year-old North Richland Hills girl with a rare and aggressive form of childhood cancer walked the runway in a ruby-red dress at New York Fashion Week this week.

Trinity Faith Moran wore a custom-made, hand-beaded Naeem Khan tulle creation as she walked beside the designer at his final show Wednesday night at the Skylight Moynihan Station near Madison Square Garden.

Trinity, who loves fashion, designing and modeling, got to keep the dress designed by Khan, whose creations have been worn by Michelle Obama and other female celebrities, and featured in the Star-Telegram’s Indulge magazine.

At the end of January, Trinity’s doctor gave her a poor prognosis and encouraged the family to contact the Make-A-Wish Foundation quickly.

“She said, ‘I want to do a fashion show, but, Mom, a real one. I want real supermodels, a designer and somewhere where fashion happens,’ ” said her mother, Kimberly Rasmus.

Trinity got her wish through a partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and stylist Mary Alice Stephenson of Glam4Good, a fashion and beauty empowerment nonprofit.

Stephenson is the national fashion ambassador of Make-A-Wish, and she has arranged Fashion Week wishes for the foundation for the past 10 years.

While helping style Khan’s show this year, Moran’s request arrived, and Stephenson asked if the designer would grant her wish.

“He looked at me and without a second thought told me he would be honored to,” Stephenson wrote in an email.

Cancer came back

Trinity was supposed to start the fifth grade at Walker Creek Elementary in the Birdville district this year. But in June, while visiting her dad, Jay Moran, in Florida, she became very ill and was taken to the emergency room.

Four days later, on June 23, her 11th birthday, her parents were told that she had rhabdomyosarcoma — a cancer that forms in the muscle tissue. She was flown back to Texas.

She underwent radiation and chemotherapy at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth. This lasted through December, her mother said.

“She is feeling better than she has ever felt,” she said.

But on Jan. 8, her doctor said the cancer was back and that Trinity has multiple tumors — one about the size of an orange — right next to her aorta. The size of the tumors make them inoperable but doctors are hoping to shrink them, Rasmus said.

‘A princess’

Trinity and her family, including her older sister, Amity Moran, 14, were flown to New York on Monday and put up in a hotel where they stayed through Thursday.

And she was treated like one of the models, Rasmus said.

“Khan got down on the floor with her and he sketched out a dress for her” that was created in less than 12 hours, she said.

Her dress is similar to one in Khan’s collection, but it is a mini version designed with Trinity in mind.

She also got a bag full of Swarovski jewelry, hair pieces and designer makeup. Celebrity makeup artist Nicole Bryl with Glam4Good did her makeup for the runway.

“I was thinking we were just going to go in a studio and some hoity-toity designer was going to come out and say, ‘Um, so, let’s design you a dress,’ but Mary Alice came in and made her a princess,” her father said.

The past few days have been overwhelming, family members said, but in a good way. Trinity has been interviewed by Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue, CBS and several New York magazines.

Third-grade teachers at Walker Creek made a video about Trinity that is on YouTube to raise awareness, and Birdville teachers have organized “Trinity Strong” fundraisers for her.

The Star-Telegram wrote about Trinity last month when she was a special guest at a Birdville High School boys basketball game against Fort Worth Dunbar High School.

“She’s already a little celebrity around North Richland Hills since the basketball game,” Rasmus said. “So now it’s going to be even bigger.”

Trinity has a drug treatment scheduled Monday and then another CT scan Feb. 29 to check the status of the tumors.

“They have just to be shrunken down so she can do surgery,” Rasmus said.

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 8:23 PM with the headline "North Richland Hills girl with rare childhood cancer walks the runway at New York Fashion Week."