There’s a reason I start every interview the same way in my head before I even hit record: who deserves this spotlight, and am I the right person to hold it up to the light? With Liris Crosse, the answer showed up before I finished typing the invite. I’m Jerilyn Harper, Digital Content Contributor here at The Curvy Fashionista, and I’ve spent my career sitting at the intersection of plus size culture and the brands, affiliates, and storytelling that move it forward.
I came up watching the same magazines Liris was breaking into. I know the difference between a brand that tokenizes a fuller body and one that actually designs for it, because I’ve covered both. That’s the lens I brought into this conversation, and it’s why TCF trusted me to sit across from a woman the industry calls “The Body” and ask her the questions plus size women have been asking for twenty years.
So let’s talk about her. Model. Actress. Author. Project Runway champion. The woman behind the plus size boot camp quietly building the next generation of girls who will never know a runway without her in it. I’m talking about the one, the only, Liris Crosse. And baby, the resume is resumeing.
Sleepy, Excited, and Twenty Years Deep
I asked Liris Crosse to give me two words for how she was feeling walking into our conversation. No warm-up, no softening it.
“Sleepy but excited,” she said.
Honestly? Real. That’s what two decades of pioneering an entire lane of an industry that didn’t want you in it looks like up close. Not a highlight reel. A woman who is tired and still showing up, because the work isn’t finished and she knows it.
I wanted to know what that work actually cost her, so I asked whether a new generation of plus size models who never had to fight her battles makes her struggle feel smaller, or like she actually won.
“I definitely don’t think it makes me feel less important that they may not have to go through some of the similar issues that I’ve had to go through, because the point of me advocating is so I could help create change so they wouldn’t have to go through that,” she told me. “Although there are a lot of things that are still very much the same. I feel like sometimes our industry takes ten steps forward and then like eight steps back. And it can be disheartening, but my thing is if you’re just committed to change and committed to the cause, you just have to stay steadfast.”
Ten steps forward, eight steps back. Write that on a sticky note and put it somewhere you’ll see it.
Before She Was “The Body,” She Was the Only One in the Room
Liris broke in at a time when you could count the plus size divisions in this industry on one hand. She was part of the very first Lane Bryant lingerie show. She remembers when that commercial got banned, not because it was inappropriate, but because the woman in it was fuller.
“We have Victoria’s Secret commercials, the show, you know, the same thing, but it was literally because just the woman was fuller,” she said.
Sit with that for a second. Same lace. Same lighting. The only difference was the body wearing it, and that was enough to get it pulled.
She started to understand that her career meant something bigger than her own bookings early, back when she landed Seventeen Magazine as a young model with, in her words, “a little bit more meat on her bones.”
“Whether it was I went back home to Baltimore and I ran into somebody at the grocery store, or I was walking down the street in New York City and someone said, oh my gosh, I saw you in Seventeen magazine, it made me feel so good because I saw somebody who looked more like me,” she said. “That’s when I really started to know that this is bigger than me.”
The Project Runway Moment She Wasn’t Going to Let Slide
We had to talk about episode seven. If you saw it, you remember the designer, the lazy execution, and Liris publicly refusing to swallow it for the sake of good TV. I asked her the question I think a lot of us have been sitting on: when does “I don’t know how to design for her body” stop being an excuse and start being a failure of imagination?
Her answer did not miss.
“Any designer that’s coming on Project Runway, plus and curve models have been here to stay since season sixteen,” she said. “If that is the case, you should do your practice before you come on the show so you know how to make something for fuller bodies. You should do your research. Social media is in the palm of your hand. Top retailers, why aren’t you looking at Eloquii to see the pieces that they’re selling? Like, you have to do your due diligence.”
Then she went for the jugular, and I was here for every word of it.
“If sixty-two percent of the women in the United States wear a size fourteen, sixteen, and you’re not designing for them, then you’re literally leaving money on the table. It’s literally preposterous for you to do that. Like, why would you do that?” she said. “I also feel like if you’re calling yourself a designer, you should be able to design for all sizes.
It’s like some of the makeup artists or hairstylists we deal with in this industry who call themselves a hairstylist but don’t know how to do black hair, or don’t know how to do Latino hair. Are you really a hairstylist? Are you really a makeup artist if you can’t color match all these different skin tones? Step your game up.”
I told her she packaged that beautifully, because she did. That’s not a complaint. That’s a mic drop with receipts.
Season sixteen, the season she won, changed more than her own trajectory. “The revolution was televised on that season,” she said. “Literally after that, you saw all this diversity on the runway. I think our season was a big catalyst for that, huge. Beyond how it may have benefited me, it’s really how it benefited the culture, how it benefited fashion, how it benefited plus size women, and that felt amazing.”
Redefining Sexy, On Her Own Terms
Before there was a plus size Ashley Graham era normalizing curves as sexy, there was Liris Crosse becoming a video vixen and earning the nickname “the Naomi of plus.” She helped pioneer fuller bodies showing up in music video leads at a time when that lane simply did not exist for women who looked like her.
“It felt good to be referred to as the body, or the Naomi of plus, because it showed that you could just have a fuller body and you can still be deemed sexy, beautiful,” she said. “I’ve always felt as a black woman my curves and my body have always been appreciated, or even deemed sexy. So it was nice to then have it be accepted more mainstream as well.”
She traces one of her “I made it” moments straight to a pair of music videos. “It was probably the Jay-Z Do It Again video and it was the Beanie Man Who Am I video,” she told me. “I had a short haircut at that time, and I had on this really sexy kind of sheer dress that showed my body in such a beautiful light.
Even now, she’s still calling out the industry for what it gets wrong when it comes to styling fuller bodies as desirable instead of just covered up. “I think just sometimes designers aren’t putting them in something that is flirty or sexy,” she said. “It’s just, okay, well, we have the token plus model, let’s put her in this cover up.
Some of them just having a wrap dress or a basic bodycon dress, and it’s like, yeah, but I see what you created for this other size. This design has layers and dimensions to it. That’s where they miss out on really showing a strong point of view design wise.”
Handing Down the Keys Instead of Guarding the Door
Twenty years in, a lot of pioneers plant their flag and never move. I wanted to know what made Liris decide to open the door for the next generation instead of guarding it.
“Even I had to learn the lesson of what’s meant for me is meant for me,” she said. “That’s why I can pass on castings that I hear about to other models. That’s why I can give tips and knowledge to different people, because it’s not going to change what is meant for me.
If it’s meant for me to book that job, if it’s meant for me to be in that space, then nothing can stop it. Not another model, not their pictures, not their walk, not their body. Nothing can stop it if I’m supposed to be a part of it. And that frees me up to really try my best to help others.”
That philosophy now lives inside the plus size model boot camp she runs, where she is training the next wave of girls to walk through the doors she kicked down. One of her students, a model named Sean, recently signed with State Management, and Liris has a feeling she’ll be popping up somewhere this New York Fashion Week.
But don’t mistake generosity for self-erasure. Liris was clear about that too. “I have also felt like I didn’t do all this hard work to not also reap the benefits of it,” she said. “That’s part of the reason why I’m still modeling. One, I love modeling, it is my first love. And two, I’ve done a lot of work in this space and I still want to reap the benefits of some of these doors that have opened.”
From the Runway to the Red Carpet
Liris is not slowing down to admire the legacy she built. She’s currently appearing on season twenty-two of Project Runway, walking three shows for New York Fashion Week, and chasing down a casting for the People’s Runway Show in between all of it. On top of that, she’s booked and shot three feature films this year, with a fourth already on the calendar, plus short films making the festival circuit.
“I’m just praying that hopefully soon my runways will be my press junkets for my TV shows and films,” she said. “I want to bring all that energy to the red carpet for my TV shows and for my films. I bit the acting bug and I am just pretty obsessed with it now.”
Modeling trained her to chase perfect. Acting is teaching her something different.
“I think it was modeling, and also the era I came up in, that made a lot of us perfectionists,” she said. “With acting, you have to abandon the perfectionist and just be vulnerable and live in that character. I didn’t realize how tough I was on myself.”
That lesson didn’t stay in the acting studio. It’s now part of what she teaches her boot camp models. “The biggest thing is telling them to have grace,” she said. “We have to show ourselves a lot more grace than we do. You’re not going to always get it right, and that’s okay. The fact that you made it here is half the issue. The fact that you got the casting is a big deal. So give yourself some grace.”
For Anyone Told to Stay in Their Lane
I asked what she tells people who are branching out while everyone around them insists they pick one thing and stick to it. What followed was less of an answer and more of a sermon, and I mean that as the highest compliment.
“I say color outside the lines,” she said. “We now live in a world where you don’t have to do things the way your parents did. They found a job, they stayed there for twenty-five, thirty years. That’s not how society is now. I believe God gives us all these talents and skills that we have. So why pigeonhole yourself to just one area? Explore a couple things, or explore all of it, and see what sticks. Have fun.”
Then she hit me with a line I have not stopped thinking about since we hung up the call.
“The most expensive place in the world is the graveyard, because that is where so many dreams and goals that people never pursued are buried,” she said. “You have to try a thing. You have to go for it. The one thing I want to feel when I am finally leaving this world is that I came, I saw, I conquered. I did the damn thing. I put myself out there. I tried. I tasted it and realized I didn’t like it. I tasted it and realized I loved it. Get out here and live. I want to leave here empty, knowing that I turned over all the stones.”
A sermon. I told her so on the call, and I’m telling you now.
How She Wants to Be Remembered
After everything, the modeling firsts, the Project Runway crown, the video vixen era, the acting career picking up speed, I asked Liris the question I always save for last. Does she want to be remembered as one of the first, or for what she made possible after she got there?
“I want to be remembered as someone who was a disruptor,” she said. “Who took up space, who spoke for the voiceless, who led by example. We have been socialized that models are to be seen and not heard, and I think that has been a dangerous thing, and why so many models have gone through physical, emotional, financial, and sexual abuse within our industry. Because they are told their voice doesn’t matter, or you better shut up so you don’t miss out on your next job.”
She wasn’t finished.
“I think that’s one of the things I’m going to be known for, that she came, she tried, she may not have gotten everything she wanted, but she put herself out there. She made herself available. She moved the needle. She loved on people, she showed up for people, she took up space, she used her voice in a way that moved the needle, not just for herself, but for all of us. That’s what I would love to be remembered for.”
Keep Up With Liris Crosse
You can follow Liris Crosse on Instagram at @LirisC, catch her on Facebook and TikTok under Liris Crosse, and find her YouTube channel at YouTube.com/LOAWmodel. Grab her book, Make the World Your Runway: Top Model Secrets for Everyday Confidence and Success, with a foreword from Tim Gunn, available on Amazon. If you want your copy signed, DM her directly and she’ll hook you up herself.
Talking to Liris Crosse reminded me why I do this work. Not for the byline, but for the moment a plus size woman reads this and sees, in full color, that the body she’s been told to shrink or hide has already changed an industry. Liris did that. She’s still doing it. And from where I’m sitting, she’s just getting warmed up.
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