2024 Designers Choice modeling gig about so much more
There are those times when, after standing on the outside looking in through the window for so long, we find that a door opens.
That last happened to me in 2021 when I broke from my longtime coverage (for the paper’s High Profile section) to competing in Dancing With Our Stars, the fundraising event for the Children’s Tumor Foundation in Arkansas and our version of the ABC-TV show “Dancing With the Stars.”
While at this event I’d look at the couples — local community celebs and their dance instructors — and daydream a bit about being onstage, cutting a rug myself. Then came 2021, when I was invited to be one of “our stars.” The experience was priceless.
I also spent years covering another fundraiser — Designers Choice Fashion Preview, which in its decade and a half has become Central Arkansas’ premier runway event and which benefits the Timmons Arts Foundation. Featured designers in and beyond Arkansas use conventional models, as well as community figures of various size and shapes, to showcase their creations during an evening that is our one-night version of New York Fashion Week.
As with Dancing With Our Stars, I’d daydream a bit while shooting photos at Designers Choice. I might not be a professional model, nor could I play one on TV, but I could be one for a few fleeting moments in my mind.
Being plus-size all but the first six years of my life and made to suffer for it in various ways, I’ve always somewhat envied conventional fashion models … tall; built like gazelles (or the Na’vi in the “Avatar” films, just not blue); and able to rock pretty much anything, sartorially. The way they strut down a runway is nothing short of arresting … shoulders back, one foot placed in front of the other, hips swaying seductively, supercilious expressions on their faces. No matter how over-the-top the clothes being modeled may look to the rest of us, models not only do them justice but give them legitimacy along with a flair that mere mortals can only dream of. That’s why we’re so quick to elevate the world’s best models to “supermodel” status and give them as much love as we do the fashion designers they work for.
Models are more than just the sum of the clothes they show … it’s about the je ne sais quoi they ooze.
Until this year, my modeling resume was restricted to showing off
childhood Easter wear each year in the spring Green Leaf Tea events my mother organized for church (I can still remember helping cut and make the invitations, made of green construction paper and shaped like leaves); and as an adult, a few scattered events, including showing off a red dress in the American Heart Association Women’s Health Expo and Luncheon last May.
Then, several months ago, I got the invitation from Theresa Timmons, founder of the Timmons Arts Foundation, to model in this year’s Designers Choice. I felt like I’d won a Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
This year’s Designers Choice took place April 20, two weekends after its customary first weekend in April, so that it wouldn’t be eclipsed by the eclipse and its related events. I was a member of a troupe of “model” models and community models tasked with starting the show off with fashions by Marlo Carter of LoLo’s Collections. Marlo puts together ensembles designed to challenge the shy at heart, snatch the wallflowers right off the wall and lift the spirits of envelope pushers everywhere. How? By using vibrant color and pattern combinations and second-take-inducing styles that, to use the popular slang terms of admiration, are sick. That slay. That kill it.
My assigned ensemble: Black lace pants with large, sassy side ruffles, worn over shorts. A cropped, dolman-sleeve top in black and white. Over that, a print duster that incorporated black, white and several other bright hues.
Somehow those Big Moments can come with challenges … in my case, knee issues and an annoying case of fluid retention just in time for the modeling gig. Thank goodness for funky but comfy, lug-soled sandals, pants that obscured bloated ankles and the fairly good mood my knees managed to be in that day.
As a model I saw the backside of Designers Choice, which meant meeting with Marlo to be fitted days before the event; communicating through group texts; and showing up early the day of for a short rehearsal, then presenting ourselves to the small army of hair and makeup artists to get show-ready (several of us decided we sorely lacked the stamina to go through the process of getting runway-ready on a regular basis). We members of Marlo’s modeling troupe bonded quickly in that short time … the camaraderie and sisterly support formed quicker than it took to get runway-ready.
And when time came to finally step out on the catwalk, the butterflies — along with those unwelcome images of blooper videos of models stumbling and falling during fashion shows — departed. I’m told, and I read, that we LoLo’s models “killed it.” I did my part: When reaching the runway’s end I slid that duster off my shoulders, snapped it in the air like a matador doing a one-handed red-cape brandishing, and dragged it behind me as I headed back to where I’d emerged from in all my colorful, lacy glory.
As we LoLo’s troupe members continue to stay in touch, I cherish the fact that the experience not only was of bucket-list quality. It was a reminder of the power of sisterhood as well as a reminder that it’s not about physical looks … it’s about how one carries one’s self.