I’ve been overlaying plus dimension vogue for The Curvy Fashionista for a few 12 months, however in that point, I’ve gotten a reasonably intimate take a look at what it means to maneuver by means of this business in a plus-size physique.
I’ve interviewed designers, creators and ladies constructing areas particularly for us, and I’ve felt each side of this group myself. I’ve been in rooms and occasions the place being plus dimension felt genuinely celebrated. And I’ve been in rooms the place I used to be the one plus dimension individual there, and all of the sudden I wasn’t simply myself anymore. I used to be standing in for each plus dimension girl, whether or not I signed up for that or not.
So, once I sat down with Kimberly Beasley forward of ThickCon 2026 this October 17, I understood precisely what she meant when she talked about wanting areas the place plus dimension individuals don’t have to hold that weight alone.
Kimberly Beasley didn’t got down to construct a motion. She got down to remedy an issue she noticed along with her personal eyes.
It was 2011, and Beasley was strolling by means of a mall along with her husband, nonetheless counting down her closing months within the navy after 20 years of service, when she seen one thing: loads of plus dimension girls within the space, however virtually nowhere for them to buy.
No boutiques constructed particularly for them, simply the identical massive field shops everybody already knew. So, she did what any good entrepreneur does. She researched the hole, then stuffed it.
“There isn’t any plus dimension boutiques on this space,” she remembers realizing. “There was nothing particular geared in the direction of plus dimension girls.” That analysis grew to become Curvatude, a boutique whose title says all of it: curves with perspective. She opened the doorways the primary Friday of June 2011, whereas technically nonetheless lively obligation, operating each lives directly for 3 months till her navy profession formally ended.
Curvatude grew to become a staple in Augusta, Georgia, for a decade. Then the pandemic hit, and Beasley made one of many hardest calls of her profession.
Closing One Chapter to Open One other
Operating a real boutique, one or two items per dimension, no restocks as soon as one thing bought, is a hands-on enterprise constructed on individuals attempting garments on in individual. A pandemic makes that just about unimaginable. “It simply didn’t look like we had been gonna come out of it,” Beasley says. “I feel that it was simply my time to maneuver into one thing else.”
Asserting the closure on social media felt like a type of demise, she admits. However as soon as it was on the market, there was no turning again, and no time to sit down in it both. Her daughter couldn’t attend preschool, so Beasley grew to become a homeschool instructor in a single day.
Her father was residing with dementia. Her husband, working in cybersecurity, was mission important and infrequently house. All the things else on her plate needed to keep. The enterprise was the one factor that would go.
In the midst of all that caretaking, true to kind for a serial entrepreneur nonetheless on the lookout for what suits, Beasley launched Curvatude Athletics, a plus dimension activewear line. It didn’t survive a botched abroad order, however she doesn’t rely it as a failure.
“I feel Curvatude Athletics was not meant to remain, but it surely was meant to transition me into the place I’m proper now,” she says. The model opened doorways to New York Trend Week, twice, and Miami Swim Week. And what she noticed on these runways modified all the pieces.
The Becoming Room That Began It All
At her first New York Trend Week, Beasley confirmed up with plus dimension swimwear and activewear, prepared for her mannequin becoming. There wasn’t a single plus dimension mannequin within the constructing. When she raised the difficulty, a staffer disappeared, then returned with a girl who wasn’t plus dimension in any respect. “She’s massive, you possibly can match her,” the staffer advised her. Beasley wasn’t having it. “That’s not my lady,” she stated.
The subsequent 12 months, she got here ready. Out of eight appears to be like, she introduced 5 of her personal fashions and her personal make-up artist, after watching the home glam group go away Black fashions trying boring with no glow. The manufacturing firm frowned on it and restricted her artist to solely the fashions she’d introduced herself. Beasley didn’t blink. Her 5 fashions, she says, killed it.
What caught along with her most was watching the protection roll in afterward. Vogue Czechoslovakia. Vogue Russia. Her model bought the press, however the protection by no means featured her true plus dimension fashions, solely those who might “move” at any angle. Those who most wanted the visibility had been those overlooked of it.
That frustration changed into a publish on her web page, a half joke about beginning her personal factor and calling it ThickCon. Her followers didn’t let it keep a joke. “Individuals had been like, do it, do it, do it,” she says. So she did the analysis, and the primary ThickCon present launched final 12 months.
When an Occasion Turns into a Motion
The primary ThickCon bought out a venue that turned out to be too massive for its personal good, over three-hundred individuals in a 3,000-person house. Nonetheless, everybody walked away saying the identical factor: it was nice. This 12 months, for ThickCon 2026, Beasley scaled the venue down and set her sights on one thing larger in each different approach.
She factors to at least one particular second because the turning level, when ThickCon stopped feeling like an occasion and began feeling like a motion. It was the mannequin name. Beasley anticipated a modest response.
She bought over 100 functions by means of JotForm, so many who she needed to improve her subscription simply to maintain up, and she or he nonetheless needed to lower off registration and switch individuals away. Ladies had been providing to fly in from California, carpool in from New York, something to be a part of it.
“When you’ve gotten individuals keen to purchase aircraft tickets to stroll,” she says, “that’s when that you might have one thing in your fingers.”
She calls it God’s little wink. The affirmation that she was on the proper path.
A Household Enterprise, Full Cease
Ask Beasley what individuals can be shocked to study ThickCon behind the scenes, and she or he’s fast to appropriate a standard assumption. There’s no sprawling manufacturing group. It’s household, and she or he needs that understood clearly.
Her niece runs the entrance desk. One other niece handles VIP concierge. A 3rd does make-up, the identical niece she delivered to New York Trend Week. Her sister, who has modeled and run exhibits alongside her for years, handles the run of present. Her husband or her sister watches her again on present day, the one two individuals who perceive her properly sufficient to know when she’s about to tilt.
Her stepson Tyrese, now 24, has labored each single present since he was 9 years previous, doing safety, setup, even gross sales when wanted. This 12 months, her nieces tried to take the day without work and simply benefit from the present as company. Beasley agreed, till they realized somebody nonetheless needed to work the door and run merch. “I suppose you’re,” she advised them. They’d already had time carved out since January.
The Largest Lesson: Pivot
Beasley’s thoughts strikes quick, typically quicker than her assets can observe. She’ll image the completed imaginative and prescient, a lodge ballroom, a full convention, earlier than the groundwork is even laid. The lesson ThickCon has taught her, time and again, is persistence with the method.
“Typically it’s a must to say, this may occur, however perhaps not proper now,” she says. “Possibly what I’m seeing is a few years from now. What are you able to do proper now? The place do you begin at with this proper now?”
It’s a lesson she traces again to her navy coaching. As soon as a sergeant, at all times a sergeant, she jokes, and the mission now could be ThickCon itself: determine the best way to navigate round any impediment with out shedding sight of the general purpose.
What’s New for ThickCon 2026
This 12 months’s ThickCon 2026 strikes to a brand new location, the Westside Cultural Arts Heart in Atlanta, and brings a fuller leisure lineup. Singer Alicia Marshall will carry out, alongside the Atlanta based mostly David Collins Band, who will shut out the present. Beasley says attendees ought to anticipate seen progress in how the present itself is produced and run.
The day is structured in phases. VIP doorways open at 1 p.m., with early vendor buying, refreshments, photographs, and swag baggage. Normal admission opens at 2 p.m., giving company time to buy and settle in earlier than the present kicks off at 2:30 with the inaugural ThickCon Honors.
This 12 months’s honorees for ThickCon 2026 are Nzinga Imani and Gwen DeVoe, the founding father of Full Figured Trend Week, whom Beasley credit straight as the rationale ThickCon exists in any respect. She met Gwendevoe the identical month she opened Curvatude, at Full Figured Trend Week in New York, and calls what she’s doing now selecting up that very same mantle.
After the honors, a monetary panel from the Wealth Academy takes the stage, one thing Beasley sees as important within the present economic system. Then the runway takes over: designers and retailers together with Intensify Me Boutique out of Augusta, Fluffy Diva out of Baltimore, Cherri Cheeks Swimwear out of Los Angeles, and 2W Thrift out of Atlanta, interspersed with performances, constructing towards the closing set from the David Collins Band.
Extra Than a Present
Beasley is direct about what she needs ThickCon to signify for the plus dimension group, particularly at a second when plus dimension traces and sizing are shrinking throughout the business relatively than increasing.
She cites a quantity she repeats usually: the common American girl wears a dimension 14 to 16, and plus dimension shoppers signify an estimated 87 billion {dollars} in spending energy. But entry to sustainable, reasonably priced, properly made clothes stays restricted, and gratitude is simply too usually the anticipated response to the naked minimal.
Her hope is that ThickCon turns into what she calls a beacon, a sign to manufacturers and retailers that this group exists, spends, and deserves higher than scraps. However simply as vital to her is the sensation contained in the room itself: an area the place plus dimension girls, males, boys, and women can stroll in and really feel good, unconditionally, earlier than any enterprise dialog even begins.
The Particulars
ThickCon 2026 takes place October 17, 2026, on the Westside Cultural Arts Heart. VIP doorways open at 1 p.m., normal admission at 2 p.m. Tickets and extra info can be found at thickcon.com.
That’s the factor about ThickCon I maintain coming again to. It’s not only a vogue present, it’s the antidote to each room the place I’ve stood alone as the one plus dimension individual, carrying a weight I by no means signed up for. On October 17, no person strolling into the Westside Cultural Arts Heart goes to be that alone. Beasley constructed a beacon, and that day, all of us get to face within the mild of it collectively.
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