A DARWEN toddler who has been battling a muscle-wasting condition has become a model for a new range of summer clothing.

Three-year-old Leyton Wright was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the end of 2014, an untreatable condition which has left him unable to walk.

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But that has not stopped him from heading for fame as he became one of the faces for Lauren Dwyer Fashion this year.

The designs are the brainchild of Blackburn College University Centre graduate Lauren Dwyer who sells baby, children’s and adult clothing.

Leyton’s success comes as his parents Tammy and Dominic are getting very close to achieving their fundraising target of £25,000 that will buy him a SnapDragon-powered wheelchair which has a seat that can be lowered to floor level.

Tammy, 25, a duty manager at Iceland in Darwen, said that she was delighted that her little boy had become a ‘superstar model’ and that the ‘amazing’ fundraising would change his life completely.

She said: “We found out about the competition that Lauren was doing through one of the photographers who has known Leyton since he was born.

“We just entered him to see what happened really and he got shortlisted and then Lauren said she absolutely loved him, so now he’s a little superstar model for the new summer range.

“We’ve been fundraising for about a year and we have almost reached our target; we’re about £2,000 away.

“Getting this chair for Leyton will change his life because at the moment he’s just got a manual wheelchair which he can self-propel but it can’t go everywhere and we want to give him that independence that I know he wants.

“He is starting to understand more now that he can’t do some things that other children can but we want things to be as normal as they possibley can be for him.”

The money for his wheelchair has been raised through a variety of events including a bungee jump at Salford Quays and a bike ride from Darwen Markets to Blackpool.

SMA is a genetic disease that causes muscle weakness and progressive loss of movement, and occurs due to deterioration in the nerve cells connecting the brain and spinal cord to the body’s muscles.

Leyton’s parents both carry the gene that causes Type Two SMA, which is not life-threatening, but do not suffer from the disease themselves.