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Speaking Of Curves: The Beauty of a Pivot with OG Influencer, Sarah Conley of Rascal Honey
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Oct 31, 2024
Heyyyy boo! Okay, we have been on a roll with our Speaking of Curves weekly series and today's guest is an OG beauty influencer, turned plus size social media maven, turned influencer again! Join us at 12pm EST/ 9am PST as we chat with Sarah Conley, the woman behind Rascal Honey! We will chat all things plus size fashion, the changes with social media, blogging, and life! If you have ever wanted to pivot, make some changes, or take a leap of faith on a vision, you'll want to tune in to today's live!
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0:06
hello hello hello happy tuesday i'm marie danae i'm the creator of
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the curvy fashionista and today's series like we're back you know speaking of curves is really
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about supporting the community talking about things that are like really happening and really going on
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and finding ways to kind of draw inspiration from um the situation outside y'all right
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because it's kind of insane but we're finding ways to pivot to stay encouraged and to support
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all of these plus size businesses and so each tuesday and thursday we have special guests within the community
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within the industry um whether it be boutique owners designers bridal boutique owners um singers
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we have different types of people on and it's really about showing support and love and coming together right
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so as you guys are joining in hello paula paula already said hi she's ready
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as you guys are joining in make sure you let us know where you're tuning in from um let us know like you know where
1:05
you're from this is your first time joining us if you are always here every day like this is a conversation we see
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your comments i want to hear from you and and let me tell you about today's guest
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so if you've been following the curvy fashionista we started in 2008
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right or a little bit of an og in this space however today's guest is like two years prior to
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me in 2006 she started in this journey right so she started
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she's a plus-sized woman she started off in the beauty space like she was like an og beauty like authority right she had all
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the insight and tea on what was going on with all of our favorite makeup companies and brands then
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she moved into a different space where she worked with the wreath a plus-sized retailer she was like a social media
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guru helping move this brand forward then a couple years back she made another pivot in which she
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launched her own platform rascal honey and it's more of a plus size lifestyle site
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and she's based i believe it's in arkansas i could be wrong but do me a favor and welcome miss
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sarah conley to the scene hello sarah can you please be my hyperman forever
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and ever sure i will be your hype i will be that hype person for you sarah how you been good i mean you know
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as good as one can be these days that's real that's so real now for those who don't know you
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share a little bit about your journey because like i could sit here and say all of it but like it's about you right so um
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tawanna was like oh she's she's hype hey so you run the world from kcmo kansas city missouri
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we're practically neighbors oh there we go because you're in arkansas right yeah i think kansas
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city's like a four hour drive from me we've got people here from
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virginia we've got paula here from virginia we've got um lakeisha here from new jersey
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we've got jersey in the house jersey's deep right now y'all we've got uh marcia um
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hello evie oh people just keep on saying hey there's someone from arkansas oh here we
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go hello keisha from arkansas amazing this just made my day
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yo look i mean we've got missouri joplin missouri in the house hello they're also nearby we're also
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neighbors there we go so tell us a little bit about your journey tell us a little bit about your
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journey wow i honestly i don't really even know how to condense it so i'm going to do my
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best if i get long-winded feel free to cut me off um so i started writing about beauty as
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i'm sure many of you can relate to it was the one thing that didn't discriminate right like lipstick always
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fits i know patrick starr says that now but it was always the feeling that i had so
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i was the person that my friends came over to my apartment actually here in the town that i live in now um and
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they would ask me to help them get ready we would you know go out to the club when i was much younger obviously
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but uh we would go out to the club and i would always do their makeup and their hair and so we would start getting ready like
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four hours earlier um and so i was always a person of the internet i was reading brian boy bryan
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boyd predates both of us i would just
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[Music] susie bubble does also appreciate both
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of us wow so i was reading all of these um new york socialite gossip blogs
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and just nobody nobody understood the weird little internet
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world that i lived in and so instead of trying to talk to my friends about olivia palermo and the
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socialite rank drama that was happening i just decided to turn to the internet
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and and and find my own people online and i started by writing about lip balm and
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beauty was easy because it was accessible and from there
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i am extremely proud to say that every professional opportunity i've ever had
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has come from my platforms from my blog from social media
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it's all how people have known me and networking and referrals um time reached out to me
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and asked me to write for them cnn reached out to me and asked me to write for them so
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it's so important to maintain these profiles and continue to put forward the version of
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yourself that you want the world and relationships right yeah absolutely i mean we've known each
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other i want to say damn like 11 years almost it's so crazy when we start
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putting ages and numbers and time periods
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with this stuff it just it makes me realize that like we could have raised like a
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like a teenager or as long as people are teenagers right the curtain is 12 in
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december girl she isn't her pre-teen years oh my god you're gonna have to have the talk with
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her soon i am i'm gonna have to have the talk girl so listen so listen for for the influencer the
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person who's interested in being an influencer going into social media today um
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or starting their own business like that pivot especially now because a lot of people are learning a little bit more about
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themselves they're finding new values and you have had different situations and reasonings for
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the pivots you've done what advice would you give to someone today like you know in the midst of everything
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that's going on trends change i think what people look for
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in terms of like say hiring freelancers or creatives or um the kinds of businesses that they
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frequent all of those things change um just according to trends according to what's
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happening in the world you know i'm sure that the pet industry was not prepared for what has happened
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in the pandemic um industry and the plants plants um every time i try to buy a
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piece of furniture aka bookshelves at walmart they are completely and totally out of
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stock just because they think everyone is redoing their homes you know there's a whole lot of things
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that these industries were not they were not prepared so my best advice is to
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listen to what your customers and your customers can be readers followers you know business
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relationships listen to what they are telling you and a lot of times they're not telling it to you in a straightforward manner they're
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not saying hey sarah you know i would really like it if you would do x or y look at the places that you're
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getting higher look at the places that you're getting interest from and move with those times instead of saying
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firmly planted in one area you know i i always considered myself a writer
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like inside in my heart you know but i never i didn't go to journalism school i
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didn't even take like creative writing in college you know and when people were calling on me for my
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opinion and hiring me for my opinion who am i to turn that down
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i mean honestly it's an opportunity exactly and then it kept happening so i listened to the universe telling me
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that that is the direction that i should be going in and you can call it intuition you can put whatever
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spiritual spin on it that you want to but it's really about listening to what
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the world is telling you and moving in that direction now tawana wants to know what is your
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motivating force like what keeps you inspired or how not even what keeps you sometimes like but where do
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you still find inspiration one of the best places for me
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to get inspiration from was actually moving out of new york
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oh interesting because the the people that we serve and what i
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mean by that is like our audiences the people watching right now they don't they don't live in new york city
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they don't shop in new york city they shop online they go to target they go to
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walmart like we don't talk to people who buy three thousand dollar dresses and if you do
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like bless you good on you please put those on instagram but like that's not who the average
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woman is and so for me i didn't move out of new york for this reason
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but it was so incredibly impactful for me to actually reconnect
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with my roots and realize that the people that i thought that i was talking to are not the people
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i want to be talking to at all so now that you have discovered through
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rascal honey your platform um you know you've also had some like so we're going
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to give a shout out to our size 24 and higher ladies that's right um or babies right
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like either one um and i wanted to talk about how you walked in
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arkansas fashion week like you represented and gave visibility
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in a way that andrew what six you're no you're five eleven six foot two you're six two
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and you're surprised 28 28 walking during arkansas
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fashion week you had a whole crop top situation going too oh i did yeah you weren't representing
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so like like if you i mean but this probably you probably wouldn't have done this if you were in new york
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definitely not um and you know what i'm going to tell you that i almost didn't okay so the designer that i've been
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walking for rosie rose she's actually asked me to walk for her four times now okay the first time i
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was hesitant to commit because i wasn't exactly sure what was going on in my life and i didn't know if i would
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be in northwest arkansas when fashion week happened so i said no
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heaven forbid somebody makes a custom outfit for me and then is stuck with it like that's not my jam
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um so when she asked me again immediately following the season that i didn't walk for her
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i was overjoyed because how many times you get asked to walk a runway at anyone
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it's like a a 36 year old a size 28 like any of those factors how many times is
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that going to happen in your life so i was like i have to do this and also i kind of have to put my money where my
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mouth is because if i'm telling people that they should be confident and that
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we need representation then why would i shy away from that um so yeah it was nerve-wracking it was
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terrifying um and in northwest arkansas fashion week a lot of people
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you know may or may not know this but it's we're the home of walmart and one of walmart's driving rules is
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that if you're a vendor you actually have to have an office here so we have offices for like cody
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and maybelline and gloria like if you have a product in walmart you have to have an office
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here so there are all these companies that are doing incredible things
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and they also participate in fashion
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exactly we also have two world-class museums that have crazy insane art
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yes just like you would not believe it some of the most incredible exhibits um that's also funded by walmart and we
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can have a conversation about politics and all of that but at least from an
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arts perspective there are some really incredible things happening here um that a lot of people just don't
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really know about so our fashion week although it's not really a week um is is pretty special and it's very
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diverse in ways that you also maybe wouldn't expect from arkansas you know kind of taking the
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general perception of it so um yeah it was crazy but i walked out onto the
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runway the very first time and because the seats are so close to the runway and the runway is narrower
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than they are in new york you know and there's maybe four rows of people seated when you walk
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out onto that runway the crowd gets quiet because it's not something that they
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expect so having to steal yourself for that reaction
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or the gasp when you come out onto the runway and you know i have always been the kind of person
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that relies on personality relies on my smile relies on my charm and when i'm on the
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runway that's my mother i would just like to point that out that's my mother my biggest fan finally confirmed right there
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hi mama conley i love it but um you know we're so used to relying
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on those things to possibly disarm people hey mocha
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it's nice to see you but when you're so used to having those things to disarm people and you don't
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have those tools anymore and you're just stone-faced
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walking the runway letting people have opinions about your body quite literally and what
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you're wearing it is a very overwhelming and
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nerve-wracking experience and somehow i've done it twice and i was supposed to walk in
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that were supposed to happen october um and obviously i don't think those are happening and right but you'll do it i will
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absolutely do it again if rosie keeps asking me i will do it every single time she has a true
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commitment to diversity and i mean that in every sense um and so she's wonderful and i think
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she's so talented and so cool and the fact that she's also from here in arkansas
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is that's amazing so yes so i want to pause for a second for
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those of you guys who are just joining in i'm here with sarah connolly an og influencer in the beauty world the
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plus-size fashion space the social media space like she's got she's got two years
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before me in this game and i kind of wanted to talk with her because like with everything that's going on in plus
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size fashion in the industry in the community like we often have many side conversations around the things we're
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seeing and what's going on but i wanted you guys to know her um if you haven't met her before she just finished talking
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about how she walked in northwest arkansas fashion week as a 6 2 size 26
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you say 5.8 model during fashion week um in arkansas
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and so talking about you know putting your money where your mouth is and really help kind of like showing up for
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yourself and even if you're someone who's been pivoting and caring curious about like that pivot and what
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to do we're going to be talking about it just for a couple more minutes and so as you're joining in like um i want you
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know we've had people here who are letting us know like carissa is here from dc we have um
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uh let's see we got miss netta here from phoenix we've got uh can you see there's
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someone else that's caught well as we recover we got antoinette she's in birmingham alabama
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hey girl amazing guys running in we totally want to have this is an interactive conversation so if you have questions or
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comments for sarah make sure you ask them and i'll pull them up onto the screen so
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plus size fashion let's talk about it for a second sarah yes because especially for you like you
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were talking about like how you wanted to make a strong stance in um the diversity and representation and
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the visual representation of of sizes and sizing and um there have been a lot of changes
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along this way there have been a lot of changes with accessibility with brands that have started to dip
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their toe into place there have been some brands that have just been like we carrying all the way up to a 10x
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was that loud bodies yes it's so exciting girl we're going all the way up to a ten
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x i don't even think i have like i think they're the only brand that
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goes up to a 10x they might be right that's loud bodies for those of
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you guys who are curious loud bodies goes up to a 10x shout out to them so for you um
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you know what are your thoughts about plus size fashion today
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i have such mixed emotions um and i think we're at a really pivotal
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point for plus size fashion um there we've lost some
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some really good brands and some startups because they weren't able to get funding because of all the big players that kind
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of came right before them that did get funding a lot of the big vc firms just said you
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know it's a conflict of interest we can't invest in your brand and this other brand and so we lost
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some good ones i think you guys all know who i'm talking about the resale value is still very high but
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i'm not selling any of my pieces
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and i think it's a shame that we all kind of felt that loss i a lot of things have happened with
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a variety of brands you know eloquent story in particular it stands out the most but it's also so
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common in terms of a brand like a parent company just not understanding what to do with a brand
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and shuttering it no matter how successful it is and so we've lost some brands there have
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been some acquisitions that i also think are very interesting but kind of um
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jean luca russo made a really interesting tweet the other day and he talked about how after 9 11 we also lost some brands
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because of the recession financial hardships and i think that we're at a point where
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that might happen again and i worry about that because as a size 28 you know i've i can hold all
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the options in my in the palm of my hand like there's not a lot of places for me to go especially from a mass fashion
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perspective and i don't i don't want to lose any of the options i have i i need
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more right right that's that's kind of the the biggest concern right now where
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my head is at um obviously as content creators we do the very best that we can to support
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these businesses but we can't do it alone you know what i mean and also
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people's financial situations are so strange and precarious right now it's just it's something i give a lot of
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thought to every day and if you know what's interesting is that in this space as part of the reason why we started the whole speaking of
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curves series is like to really show support for the indies the small businesses to help support them during this time so
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that they can make it through to the other side whatever the other side looks like right
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um many indie designers have pivoted to adding masks adding additional pieces adding things
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so that they can better supplement their their brand right so it's kind of become like a more of a lifestyle brand
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situation which actually um what i'm curious though is like
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you know we have the acquisitions you know uh city chic is just all over everything right now right and you know
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i'm glad that they've still saved it right you know so that we don't completely lose like a catherine's who
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had the full size ranges or the um avenue who had more full sizes um but we lose the physical
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places to shop yeah so like i don't blame by the way
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eloquently recently closing their stores i do not blame them at all when you think about um like
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employee costs that's the biggest cost for any business is labor and if they have a thriving e-commerce
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presence right now i don't see a reason for them to have physical stores i saw a lot of people who were upset
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about it but you know if we're talking about losing physical stores versus losing the eloquent that we know
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and love today like please close the doors because i'll do what i can to keep it
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now tawarm had a question for you she's like how do you hope to expand with your brand
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that's a big oh my goodness gracious i actually uh i'm i'm trying to make some
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moves right now um when i started style it i would say like maybe
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in its heyday i didn't want to run banner advertising
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because i thought that it made my site look hideous and ugly and um that's not where adult sarah
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who understands that real um lives right now so i've got some i've
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got some traffic goals in mind um most importantly and this kind of dovetails with the
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tropicals is that i want to remain as independent as i can
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and that doesn't mean not taking sponsorships but in the sort of era that style and i
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frankly grew up in i had a lot of relationships with brands and pr people and one of
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the main reasons that i actually shut style it down was because i felt like my entire
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existence had become beholden to these people and the access that they gave me and so when i restarted you know
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my presence online but i started it as rascal honey i felt like i had cut
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all of those strings off i feel like nsync no strings and hatched right now sorry but i
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i had um sort of removed all of those obligations for myself and i feel
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so much more free creatively and and that is really where i want to
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stay and so in order to do that it takes things like banner ads it takes things like
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affiliate revenue of course it takes things like sponsorships and i want to continue down a
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path where i feel less encumbered by those relationships so that is it's
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ultimately my goal you know what's interesting is that you know as we both started like pre-instagram
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open pre-instagram before facebook like right when facebook opened
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to the public right i remember like the second that they opened to the public i was like
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make my account um twitter gosh i remember when twitter
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started oh i do too twitter was so small at one point that in new york i went to a
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mashable party um where like the founder of mashable was there it was kind of a tweet up
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and people across the room recognized me from my twitter profile
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photo because twitter was so small that you could easily meet people or have seen
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them in your timeline right oh my gosh like i was in 2009
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it's crazy like you know i'm like for me i was like damn i wish i would have thought of having the marie
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versus the marie janae like the at like i'm all that would have been like you know epic because nowadays when you
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see someone with a christie or a pam you're like damn you was a og on twitter
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i just joined a new platform and i got at sarah and let me tell you i've never felt more
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accomplished there we go that's that's what it's about that's what it's about
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let's see she goes the good old days when you can meet people from your timeline and not be creepy we still do that now where would you
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talk about that's exactly what i was gonna say i've met so many people that i know online and it
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and you just kind of look at each other and you're like i feel like i know you this isn't weird at all right like or you get on
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the phone with someone and you're like i can't believe we have not talked in like 12 years like we've known each
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other like you know hi like do you tweet or you're in facebook groups or you're in
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uh i don't know like little group chats and everything like that but you've never met in real life but then when you
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finally do meet it's like friend hi
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so for you you're kind of concerned which is natural about like where plus size
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fashion is um and especially with the accessibility with sizes 24 plus
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so can we can we give a shout out to the brands that do do it well for you right now that are 24
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plus who i wish that i had all of the money
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in the world to fill my closet with with some of these some of these brands that i love so much
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um i don't i live in arkansas for a reason and that's because i'm poor uh writing does not make you a lot
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of money but i do want to be able to pay my bills um so i honestly and truly
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spend the bulk of my fashion income at aliqui um i i now have
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some um i guess the earth just shook um i now
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have some kind of moral qualms about supporting them after the walmart acquisition
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but you know with walmart being the kind of hometown favorite around
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here it's kind of hard to get away from them so um i
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obviously look at target all the time i think they're doing really great things i love that the ava
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and viv and also there's another there's like an intimate brand at target but there are 4x 28 30. and so
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that i like it i like it a lot
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i always write for old navy always so hard especially when it comes to jeans
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for sure um i wish that i had more experience with smaller brands
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but it got so hard it's so hard especially at the price point
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obviously universal standard we can have a whole conversation about their politics but they have been
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out front with the same messaging and really proving through their actions
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instead of just talking about what they want to do they've really been praying through their actions
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the kind of support and the kind of vision that they have for you know fashion and inclusivity
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um let me see who else am i super into i'm gonna
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go ahead and start okay i'm gonna say because like i'm gonna make sure i get your list because we're gonna
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include this and when we um wrap this up and do our little post about you we're gonna make sure
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that we get your quad picks for size 20 updates so that you also get that so keisha
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we'll have that in um follow-up posts for you okay sorry i'm just not remembering them
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right now i do also just do like a favorite black owned business brand and so that post on
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instagram also has some favorites with some size details because i think it's very important to make sure
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that when we talk about plus that we talk about sizing and in fact i think all fashion should be talking about the
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sizes that a brand carries
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[Music] davis has a question she said any
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suggestions on growing your social media presence for any designers
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go for it this is real jam it is my jam um
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i acknowledge that it is very hard to grow a platform and that
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creating content for today's we'll call it social economy can be a huge time investment
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if that's being said it totally is yes that being said content really is
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everything in terms of getting eyeballs um i manage i i'm the director of
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marketing for arkansas's only cut to order tea shop
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