Chic fashionista has big plans for hometown
She is elegant, engaging and electric.
Scroll through a stream of social media sites and witness the many faces of Burgundy Woods. She’s a chameleon who slips from svelte to street style, as comfortable in a pair of chucks as she is in stilettos. She is a chic fashionista, at home at a film studio or a high-rise garden party or when lit by camera flashes on the red carpet.
Woods, 40, is on a mission to make San Antonio and Texas synonymous with fashion. She is the editor-in-chief of Style Lush TV, president of the Texas Fashion Industry Initiative and founder of Texas Fashion Week and the Texas Fashion Awards. In 2016, San Antonio Magazine chose Woods as the city’s Best Fashion Ambassador. The San Antonio Museum of Science & Technology named her the 2020 fashion innovator for her contributions to the digital content industry.
Woods’ achievements are the result of years as a trend forecaster and online fashion media personality and of working in the music industry in Hollywood.
“I live my job,” Woods said at her office on South Flores. “That’s everything I do.”
Michelle is her middle name; her surname is Rodriguez. Her parents Rachel and Sergio Rodriguez christened her with her first name after a local 1970s discotheque, where they fell in love and danced the nights away.
Woods, an only child, grew up on her mother’s stories about the glamour and glitz of the disco era. She was enthralled by tales of glistening red lipstick, cutting the long line at the red rope and grooving to bodyshaking music on crowded dance floors.
In kindergarten, her classmates called her “the weird kid with the weird music.” When they sang nursery rhymes, she belted out “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, on heavy rotation in her home. She grew up on the South Side, influenced by two strong women: her mother and grandmother Consuelo Rios, her ultimate role models. They empowered her to rise above naysayers who dismissed her because she was Mexican American and a girl.
Woods didn’t have one career in mind, she had three: music, fashion and art. Her choir teacher at Harlandale High School encouraged her to apply for a University of the Incarnate Word vocal scholarship. Woods auditioned and beat out dozens of applicants for the award.
In 2002, she enrolled in an inaugural course called Music Industries. She was the only student in the class. Woods earned a bachelor’s degree in music/music industries from UIW.
In her third year, she sought an internship with Virgin Records, the recording label of Janet Jackson, one of her favorite artists. Every four weeks for one year, she sent a handwritten letter to the label’s headquarters. All went unanswered.
When she heard that recruiters were attending a talent search in Miami, she saved enough money to attend the event. On stage, Woods sang a song then surprised the representative when she added on a pitch for an internship.
“I’m not looking to be discovered,” she said. “I’m the girl who has been pestering you.”
“Oh,” the recruiter replied, “I know who you are.”
Impressed by her tenacity, he hired Woods as an intern in Hollywood, her home for the next 10 years. She moved up and on, working at several companies, including Capitol Records, EMI Records and Interscope Records. Her client list included Bono, Gwen Stefani and Snoop Dogg.
Woods immersed herself in the entertainment business, from working as a seat-filler at the Academy Awards to supervising music in the film and TV industry. Then she segued to the world of style at The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.
Following her talent for predicting future styles, she started a Youtube channel to share forecast weekly fashion trends with the world. Her broadcasts caught the attention of Myspace personnel who hired her as a fashion curator for their fashion channel. At the channel’s peak, she had 4 million friends.
Those numbers caught the attention of a digital company that signed her to a contract as executive of digital fashion media.
But she had to breach her contract and return to San Antonio when her mother became ill. Woods’ emotions were already in tatters. A longtime relationship had ended badly, a casualty of life in the fast lane. And her financial resources, once robust, were all but gone.
The third passion of her life — art — pulled Woods out of her sadness. A key moment was a visit to a Second Saturday Artwalk in Southtown, where she met a range of people from the fashion industry. Woods fell back into her role as a fashion creative, bringing folks from different pockets of the fashion community to one place.
She created a new purpose: launching Style Lush TV, a network that shared stories of local fashionistas, retailers and trends. Critics said she would fail. Woods, a self-described optimist, forged ahead.
“It’s telling these people’s stories,” she said. “Letting people know they exist.”
In 2015, Woods founded the San Antonio Fashion Awards to pay homage to the local style industry.
Woods has even bigger plans. In 2019, she started the Texas Fashion Industry Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for positive growth for the fashion industry. That led to Texas Fashion Week, an eight-day event featuring fashion shows, art talent and entrepreneurs. She offers sessions about the fashion industry through the Silver Jacket Entrepreneur Program, which includes lessons about marketing, accounting and legal contracts for participants from the high school level to adult entrepreneurs.
“We want to help everyone succeed,” she said. “The most important thing is to give them resources, education and a network, so their brain is their most valuable asset. My goal is to make the epicenter of Texas fashion industry here in San Antonio.”
The pandemic brought new challenges. Everything came to a halt, and she feared for the future. Then came a sign that all wasn’t bleak. Woods received an email about a major project she had worked on for six years: bridging San Antonio with the New York fashion industry through the Council for Fashion Designers of America. The council wants to help her with Texas Fashion Week.
The bounce-back moment goes back to her mother and grandmother, who taught Woods to believe that while life has its ups and downs, you never stop and you keep going.
“If you just know nothing stays the same,” she said, “note that every day. Then when those blows come, it’s a little easier. The up arc will always come.”