She is classy, engaging and electrical.
Scroll via a stream of social media web-sites and witness the a lot of faces of Burgundy Woods. She’s a chameleon who slips from svelte to street style, as comfortable in a pair of chucks as she is in stilettos. She is a chic fashionista, at home at a film studio or a substantial-rise backyard bash or when lit by digicam flashes on the crimson carpet.
Woods, 40, is on a mission to make San Antonio and Texas synonymous with vogue. She is the editor-in-chief of Model Lush Tv set, president of the Texas Trend Business Initiative and founder of Texas Vogue Week and the Texas Fashion Awards. In 2016, San Antonio Magazine selected Woods as the city’s Finest Manner Ambassador. The San Antonio Museum of Science & Technologies named her the 2020 trend innovator for her contributions to the digital material industry.
Woods’ achievements are the outcome of yrs as a trend forecaster and on line manner media identity and of doing the job in the tunes field in Hollywood.
“I dwell my career,” Woods mentioned at her business office on South Flores. “That’s all the things I do.”
A 22-yr veteran of the Air Drive, Vincent T. Davis embarked on a 2nd job as a journalist and discovered his calling. Observing and listening throughout San Antonio, he finds intriguing tales to notify about everyday people today. He shares his stories with Categorical-Information subscribers each Monday early morning.
Michelle is her center identify her surname is Rodriguez. Her mother and father Rachel and Sergio Rodriguez christened her with her first title just after a community 1970s discotheque, the place they fell in like and danced the nights away.
Woods, an only little one, grew up on her mother’s tales about the glamour and glitz of the disco period. She was enthralled by tales of glistening pink lipstick, cutting the prolonged line at the red rope and grooving to entire body-shaking tunes on crowded dance flooring.
In kindergarten, her classmates called her “the unusual kid with the strange new music.” When they sang nursery rhymes, she belted out “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, on significant rotation in her house. She grew up on the South Facet, motivated by two potent females: her mother and grandmother Consuelo Rios, her best position versions. They empowered her to rise over naysayers who dismissed her simply because she was Mexican American and a lady.
Woods didn’t have 1 occupation in mind, she experienced a few: audio, style and artwork. Her choir trainer at Harlandale Superior School encouraged her to utilize for a College of the Incarnate Term vocal scholarship. Woods auditioned and beat out dozens of applicants for the award.
In 2002, she enrolled in an inaugural study course termed Songs Industries. She was the only college student in the course. Woods attained a bachelor’s degree in new music/tunes industries from UIW.
In her third yr, she sought an internship with Virgin Information, the recording label of Janet Jackson, a single of her most loved artists. Every single 4 months for one particular year, she sent a handwritten letter to the label’s headquarters. All went unanswered.
When she read that recruiters had been attending a expertise search in Miami, she saved enough dollars to show up at the function. On stage, Woods sang a tune then amazed the consultant when she included on a pitch for an internship.
“I’m not hunting to be discovered,” she mentioned. “I’m the lady who has been pestering you.”
“Oh,” the recruiter replied, “I know who you are.”
Amazed by her tenacity, he employed Woods as an intern in Hollywood, her home for the future 10 years. She moved up and on, operating at a number of corporations, such as Capitol Documents, EMI Records and Interscope Information. Her shopper listing bundled Bono, Gwen Stefani and Snoop Dogg.
Woods immersed herself in the amusement small business, from performing as a seat-filler at the Academy Awards to supervising new music in the film and Television sector. Then she segued to the globe of model at The Vogue Institute of Design & Merchandising.
Subsequent her expertise for predicting future types, she commenced a YouTube channel to share forecast weekly trend traits with the globe. Her broadcasts caught the awareness of Myspace staff who hired her as a style curator for their manner channel. At the channel’s peak, she experienced 4 million close friends.
These figures caught the notice of a electronic organization that signed her to a agreement as govt of digital vogue media.
But she had to breach her contract and return to San Antonio when her mother turned sick. Woods’ emotions had been previously in tatters. A longtime relationship had ended terribly, a casualty of existence in the quickly lane. And her economical resources, once strong, had been all but gone.
The third enthusiasm of her daily life — artwork — pulled Woods out of her unhappiness. A critical instant was a check out to a Next Saturday Artwalk in Southtown, exactly where she met a assortment of men and women from the trend business. Woods fell back again into her position as a trend resourceful, bringing folks from diverse pockets of the manner group to a single spot.
She made a new objective: launching Design and style Lush Tv set, a community that shared tales of area fashionistas, suppliers and traits. Critics claimed she would are unsuccessful. Woods, a self-described optimist, forged ahead.
“It’s telling these people’s tales,” she explained. “Letting people today know they exist.”
In 2015, Woods established the San Antonio Fashion Awards to shell out homage to the regional type market.
Woods has even more substantial ideas. In 2019, she started out the Texas Vogue Marketplace Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for optimistic advancement for the trend business. That led to Texas Manner 7 days, an eight-working day occasion featuring manner exhibits, art talent and business owners. She presents classes about the vogue marketplace via the Silver Jacket Entrepreneur Plan, which contains lessons about marketing, accounting and authorized contracts for contributors from the high school degree to adult business people.
“We want to enable anyone thrive,” she stated. “The most essential matter is to give them means, education and learning and a network, so their brain is their most beneficial asset. My goal is to make the epicenter of Texas vogue business listed here in San Antonio.”
The pandemic brought new issues. Every thing came to a halt, and she feared for the long term. Then arrived a signal that all was not bleak. Woods acquired an e-mail about a main job she experienced labored on for six years: bridging San Antonio with the New York vogue market by the Council of Manner Designers of The united states. The council desires to support her with Texas Fashion 7 days.
The bounce-again instant goes back again to her mom and grandmother, who taught Woods to think that though life has its ups and downs, you under no circumstances stop and you retain likely.
“If you just know almost nothing stays the exact,” she stated, “note that each day. Then when individuals blows appear, it’s a tiny much easier. The up arc will generally come.”
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