Friday, January 8, 2010

Daily Venus Diva Magazine interviews Gwen DeVoe

Good Morning Fam!!!

When you get a moment today, please take a second to check out this month's issue of Daily Venus Diva Magazine. There's a wonderful interview of my long time homie....Gwen DeVoe, The CEO of NY's wildly popular DeVoe Signature Events (Thanks for the shout out chica!) .... it's a really good read for everyone...but especially for aspiring plus size models.

Here's a glimpse of a portion of her interview....enjoy!

For those living under a rock and don’t know who Gwen Devoe is, please tell our readers about yourself?

{smiling at “for those living under a rock”} First, thanks so much for giving me yet another opportunity to talk about what it is that I do. It is through publications such as yours that I am able and will continue to help women who aspire to enter this maze we call the modeling industry.

I am a former athlete and party promoter (which is what we called ourselves back then) who later became a freelance plus model. My frustrations in trying to advance in the plus modeling industry led me to turn my passion for plus modeling into a business whose mission is to provide education, consultation and opportunities to women who are interested in the industry.

First you have DeVoe Signature Events™. Is everything you do under DeVoe Signature Event™ or do you keep things separate?

Ultimately, everything I produce involves a portion of DeVoe Signature Events™ because that is the parent company, e.g. the root from which everything else grows. However, under that root are several “signature” events and programs. They include: The Plus Academy™, Full Figured Fashion Week™, Dangerous Curves…the Tou™, Project Curves™, Full Figured and Fabulous™, and the Ready to Runway Bootcamp™.

Have you always wanted to go into event planning and why work with Plus Size Women?

As I mentioned, I’ve been an event planner for many, many years. The truth is that when I produced my first fashion event, it was because the entertainment that I hired did not show up. I promptly pulled some friends from the audience and did an impromptu fashion show. The rest is Her-Story! Additionally, when I began producing fashion events, I didn’t use plus models at all. It was easier to find clothing for straight size models and they were plentiful. I was the owner of Diva’s Encore Models, which was THE most popular modeling troop in the 90’s. We were so popular, we were booked to do several shows a week. When I added my first plus model to the event (Sharon Quinn), the crowd went wild and I knew I was onto something. But, that’s also when I recognized the need to not only provide a platform for plus models, but to provide training to them as well.


CLICK HERE to read this article in it's entirety.


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