Diagnosed with Severe Crohn’s at 19, One Woman Is Changing How the World Sees Ostomies Through Fashion (Exclusive)
- - Diagnosed with Severe Crohn’s at 19, One Woman Is Changing How the World Sees Ostomies Through Fashion (Exclusive)
Ashley VegaFebruary 18, 2026 at 1:37 AM
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Paula Sojo modeling her ostomy bag
Paula Sojo
After receiving an ostomy at 18, Paula Sojo began sewing fashionable covers to match her outfits
She tells PEOPLE the idea grew after other ostomy patients on TikTok asked where they could get one
Her brand Osto•me Fashion now ships worldwide and donates covers to hospitals and patients in need
The first ostomy cover Paula Sojo ever owned arrived in a hospital package. She was 18, recovering from surgery, when a close family friend sent handmade fabric covers meant to make the medical device feel less clinical.
Instead, Sojo saw possibility. “They were so cute,” she tells PEOPLE, “but I took it more as like, this is a really cool product — but I know how I can make it even better.”
At the time, her world had collapsed into hospital rooms and recovery timelines after severe Crohn’s disease led to emergency surgeries. The ostomy — a life-saving surgical opening on the abdomen which redirects stool or urine outside the body into a pouch system — she says, felt like a symbol of everything she had lost.
But the covers shifted something in how she saw herself. “I was like, you know what an 18-year-old girl loves — fashion-forward, flashy stuff,” she says. “I can make this a literal accessory.”
That reframing marked the beginning of Osto•me Fashion, the brand she would later launch to help others living with ostomies feel visible and confident. It also changed how she related to her own body.
Paula Sojo modeling her ostomy bags
Paula Sojo
“I went from seeing this as like a medical device to something that I could really embrace and wear, not just have,” she says. The difference, she explains, was psychological as much as aesthetic.
Soon after leaving the hospital, Sojo posted a TikTok wearing one of the handmade covers. Among the comments was a simple question that changed everything: where can I get one?
“I clicked on the profile and realized they have an ostomy too,” she says. Until that moment, she believed she was almost alone.
During her hospital stay, she says she was the only young patient on her ward, surrounded mostly by people decades older. “I was the only one below the age of 80,” she says. “And I was like, how can this be?”
Seeing another young person with an ostomy cracked that isolation open. “That was a pivotal moment for me to realize that there are other girls going through the same thing,” she says.
Back home, she sat down with the same family friend who had sent the covers and asked to learn. The woman taught her how to sew one from start to finish. “I was like, this is actually really cool,” Sojo says. “And I can see myself doing this a lot.”
She began sewing covers in her bedroom, experimenting with fabrics and colors. At first, she made them just for herself. “I was matching my tops with my ostomy covers,” she says. “And those went viral.”
On social media, viewers responded to the idea of styling an ostomy rather than hiding it. Comments shifted from curiosity to requests. “People started asking me, will you sell these? Can I get them?” she recalls. The attention planted a new possibility.
The push toward building a brand came from inside her family. One day, she says, her younger brother Daniel walked into her room and saw the growing demand. “He was like, wow, these people really want these ostomy covers,” she says. “Maybe we can start something.”
The idea became a family project. Her brother proposed they become co-founders, produce the covers in Colombia where their family is from, and build something meaningful together.
Ostomy Bags by Osto•me Fashion
Paula Sojo
Her grandfather, a longtime production manager and engineer, also joined in. “He had it all planned out,” she says. “He was ready to support us.”
Together, the three mapped out what would become Osto•me Fashion. The brand officially launched in September 2023.
Since then, Sojo says, orders have reached customers in 30 countries. But the growth, she explains, is measured less in numbers than in stories. “It’s not just the products that we sell,” she says. “It’s the journeys that we’re able to be a part of.”
She recently received a photo that crystallized the brand’s purpose. A 6-year-old girl was wearing one of Osto•me’s sequined covers to school with pride. “She had her little backpack and she was so proud to show it off,” Sojo says. For her, the image represented a future she never saw at that age.
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Other customers are older adults who may never display their covers publicly. “They’re not to show off, but just for themselves,” she says, explaining that private confidence can be just as powerful.
Sojo’s designs increasingly push beyond camouflage toward celebration. One of her newest concepts — ostomy covers shaped like miniature purses — has drawn intense response online.
“Nobody else has ever done it before,” she says. The goal, she explains, is to break stigma by making the ostomy visible on the wearer’s own terms. “Ostomies are a beautiful thing,” she says.
Paula Sojo modeling her ostomy bags
Paula Sojo
From the start, she says, the brand’s values were as important as its look. Production runs are intentionally small and fabrics are used fully to minimize waste. “We use every last piece of fabric,” she says. Sustainability, she explains, felt essential in an industry already burdened by pollution.
Access was another priority. For every three covers sold, Osto•me donates one to hospitals or people who cannot afford them. “Our brand is built on love,” she says. “We really try to share that in everything that we do.”
Sojo’s broader story first reached millions through her viral TikTok describing how her Crohn’s symptoms were dismissed before life-saving surgeries. But the brand grew from what came after survival — the long process of rebuilding identity.
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The ostomy that once represented loss became the center of a new purpose. Through design, she says, she reclaimed something she thought she had permanently lost at 18: ownership of how she was seen.
Today, Sojo says she wants every person with an ostomy to feel that same shift. “This isn’t something they have to be ashamed of,” she says.
At its core, Osto•me Fashion is about reframing a medical device as part of self-expression. “It’s just something that helps you live your life,” she says, “and I think it should be celebrated.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
