There will always be stories around all of us about people who managed, rather than who worked really hard to achieve a dream they had dreamt since they were children.
Inspirational stories of kids making it big in life and pursuing their one and only dream since childhood have circled around the internet from all across the world for an eternity.
Sportsmen and women, leading business tycoons, arts performers, and almost all the different work industries have had stories like these to boast for quite a lot of time. One such industry that has always had a fair share of such stories, inspirational and feel-good stories is the fashion industry.
Ever since its inception, the world of glamour and fashion has had some wonderful stories about gents and ladies who came and conquered the industry and when asked they were really quick to reply that yes, that is exactly what they wanted to do.
Kids turned adults who have had a big journey to talk about on their way to reaching the pinnacle of life in the limelight.
Take some of the biggest names and they will have some wonderful insights about how they dreamt of making it big as a model and then worked very hard towards achieving that dream. One such story coming from the contingent of plus size models is that of Candice Huffine.
Candice Huffine, now a successful and renowned plus size model was also a very successful teenage model and teenage beauty queen. Born on the 15th of October, 1984 Candice Huffine currently stands among the most popular plus size models of the world.
Represented by IMG Models, this beautiful model has a beautiful backstory behind her success which is sure to act as a big inspiration for many aspiring models right now and in the future. Candice Huffine didn’t have a plan B.
From the day she was born, she wanted to be a model. What she didn’t know was how to get there. Raised in a small town in Maryland outside of Washington D.C., Huffine did cheerleading and pageants as a teen, thinking that one day someone was going to discover her.
When Huffine was 15, an audience member at a pageant suggested that she visit modeling agencies in New York. After researching which agencies her favorite supermodels were at, Huffine and her mom took a two-day trip to New York to meet with two dozen agencies.
She was rejected by all of them, all of them except for one, which was starting a new plus-size division, and told Huffine that she, a size 8 at the time, would be a perfect fit. She had never come across the term plus size until then, and little did she know that it was this term that would go on to change her life significantly.
That one term changed her world and in return, she is helping change the life of many who are associated with that term.
As Huffine was growing up, her mom, a size 14 at the time, never made her feel less-than because of her size. Huffine wasn’t aware that they shopped in a different section in clothing stores, and it was never a big deal when either of them gained weight.
Even when the time came to interact with the media, Huffine wasn’t negatively affected by the parade of rail-thin women. The first time she was seriously aware of her size was when she started modeling and saw her waistline as an excuse for discrimination. A case that had or is happening still with many other up-and-coming plus-size women in this business.
As a plus size model, Huffine has become known for reducing barriers in the fashion industry. Her A-list work includes being featured in publications such as CR Fashion Book, Italian Vogue (cover), Vogue, W, V Magazine, i-D, and Glamour.
She has worked with top industry names such as Mert Marcus and Steven Meisel as well as Carine Roitfeld. In 2015 she became the first plus-size woman to be featured in the Pirelli Calendar and it 2016 she gained international attention for Lane Bryant’s #ImNoAngel campaign.
She has appeared in multiple New York Fashion Week including 2017 Fall/Winter walking the runway for noted designers such as Prabal Gurung, Sophie Theallet, and Christian Siriano. In 2016 Huffine founded Project Start, a collaborative initiative with Women’s Running Magazine to encourage and inspire women to begin their running journey.
Huffine has been modeling for the past two decades now, but she only really counts the most recent decade. The first eight years were spent meandering in the fashion industry as a model who was considered plus size but was really in between categories.
There was also a lack of brands willing to design plus-size clothes. And the ones that did cater to curvy women usually made clothes for more conservative customers (think business suits), which Huffine, a teenager at the time, was far from the face of.
Even beauty campaigns, where clothing wasn’t the focus, turned Huffine away because of her size. She never gave up though and that spirit has got her where she is right now in her life.
It wasn’t until the rise of social media and her following exploded with women who saw her as a real-life example of the average woman’s body that Huffine, now a size 12, saw a change. In 2011, Huffine was cast for the first Vogue Italia cover to feature a plus-size model in more than a decade, a huge answer to all those people who thought modeling was made only for thin and the so-called regular size women.
Her work speaks for itself and she is one of the very few plus size models who have remained undeterred for such a long time in their life. Her work, both as a teenage beauty sensation and now, as a plus size model is exemplary and something that all aspiring models, plus size or not should look up to whenever they feel like looking for inspiration.
