![]() Where DeVoe once struggled to get press coverage for her shows, she now has more than 100 fashion bloggers who apply to work as Full Figured Fashion Week’s personal press corps. Interest from plus-size fashion designers also continues to grow, and, like Tim Gunn on a Project Runway finale episode, DeVoe even travels throughout the year to meet with up-and-comers. (That's still just a fraction of what some designers’ Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week runway shows cost.) Now, she employees a part-time staff of 15, and corporate sponsors like plus-size retailers Lane Bryant and Sonsi help cover the event’s production costs, which hover close to $100,000. Back then, she recruited volunteers and solicited sponsors for support. ![]() She answered the call within the year, spending leftover money from her tax returns to put on the very first Full Figured Fashion Week in 2009. “So I said, ‘I need one of these for my peoples.’ It wasn’t rocket science. “I went to a fashion show, sat there for 15 minutes and saw nothing that I could buy because I was too fat and they didn’t have it in my size,” DeVoe says upstairs in her Affinia hotel room, her makeshift office for the week. Full Figured Fashion Week concluded its fifth year this weekend, but even in its infancy, the annual celebration has already been dubbed the Oscars of plus-size women's fashion, with each night bringing together an average of 500 models, designers, retailers, bloggers and shoppers from an industry worth $14 billion annually - about 14% of the total women's clothing market - according to consumer tracking service the NPD Group.ĭeVoe, 54, is a former plus-size model, but the inspiration for the Full Figured Fashion Week only struck a few years ago. ![]()
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