Candice Huffine just keeps rising. The 27-year-old’s dazzling ascendant arc can be traced from pageant toddler to teen beauty queen, then to successful plus-size catalog model and, now, a darling of the haute fashion editorial world. She started modeling in 2000 with lucrative commercial jobs, so Huffine was no stranger to the lens when her career suddenly took a high-end turn in 2011. That’s when V Magazine tapped the size 13 beauty with Choctaw Indian and German roots for their “Curves Ahead” feature, styled by Nicola Formichetti and snapped by Norwegian photog Sølve Sundsbø. From there, things took off. Huffine landed Vogue Italia‘s groundbreaking plus-sized cover, and then began working with the likes of Steven Meisel, Mert & Marcus, and Edward Enninful (who recently gave her a sweet shout-out on WMag.com).

Not that there haven’t been stumbling blocks among Huffine’s many successes. When, as a teenager, she first came to New York with her mother to explore modeling, things didn’t necessarily go swimmingly. “There was some rejection involved,” she recalls, and “A few places asked me to lose weight.” But the unusually self-aware teen knew that waifdom wasn’t in the cards for her naturally curvy figure. As she explained to The Cut, “For me, personally, if my body wasn’t meant to be that way and I had to struggle with that for many years, I would be a wreck.” She rejected the weight-loss advice and signed on as a plus size. “When I was 14, the losing fifteen pounds thing wasn’t even an option for me. I was kind of like, I’d rather go home.” Good thing she didn’t. Read more of Huffine’s interview at The Cut.

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