Photo courtesy of [Montanique (Monei) Sutton]
Monei Sutton is a fashion designer, producer, and actress who is best known for her fashion boutique Curvalicious Couture. At a time when she considered herself to be plus-sized, she was inspired to make clothes for fuller-figured women since the fashion industry lacks inclusion in that area. Fast forward and she is now making clothes for all sizes. Lately, the serial entrepreneur has chosen to focus on her first love – acting.
Sutton recently starred in a movie called Trans Me Reloaded in she played a transgender person. Although she does not identify as transgender and clarifies that she was born a woman, she wanted to embrace the LGBTQ+ community and show support in the best way she could.
What inspired you to create Curvalicious Couture?
I got started about nine and a half years ago when I was a plus sized model. I just started modeling and saw that nobody had clothes that I really wanted to wear. Although I was 290 lbs. at that particular time, I was like, “okay, I can start designing certain things for myself. I’ve always liked the lace and see through [material], so I came up with the company and started making sexy lingerie. I always tell people I was making it for the people who were size 18 and larger, and the smaller girls got jealous and so I started to do it for sizes 0-24.
What drove you to play this character in Trans Me Reloaded?
Well, what I liked about that film is that I’m totally a transgender in that film. It was kind of crazy because when I was offered that role a lot of transgenders did not want to play that [role]. TS Madison and I [were]in part one. However, she’s booming right now so they didn’t get her back for part two and I took on the leading role. It’s showing the diversity with the movie and diversity even in my acting. I was super excited about that, and I also have another one that’s coming up called Dispute and it’s getting ready to come out on Hulu in February. It is definitely a lifetime film, just showing people the range. As I tell people, “When you’re being an actor you just want to show them the range of what you can do.”
