This piece is part of our Q+A series. Know someone we should interview? Nominate them here.
Profile: You might remember Sean Taylor from the first season of Netflix’s social-media-inspired reality TV show “The Circle.” The fashion influencer + advocate went to VCU to study theater before moving to New York. Now, she’s back in Richmond and ready to build a supportive + resourceful community with her new social club, RVA Fatties.
We asked Sean 10 questions about her recent move + important work. Read on to find out what her ideal Saturday looks like, the place she thinks every Richmonder should know about + details on projects she has in store for her group.
What are you looking forward to most about being back in Richmond?
I’ve been looking forward to a lot of things. Most practically, living in New York City, obviously you have a lot less space. During the pandemic, my boyfriend and I essentially were always like arm’s length distance from each other. We love each other a lot and didn’t really fight very much, but we’re both excited about having a little bit more room.
We also have a little French Bulldog named Burger. And I think we’ve been most excited about giving him a backyard. We’ve been telling him about it for months, but he hasn’t really been absorbing that information.
Have you noticed any changes to the city since you left college and then coming back?
The first thing that we noticed when we were driving through — so many more high-rise apartment buildings on Broad. We were like, Whoa, what is this? Also, I think when I left Richmond, Scott’s Addition was just kind of becoming what it is now. Now it’s truly brewery city. So that’s definitely new.
Also, I went to VCU. The updates at VCU are always astounding. Now there’s a little Sonic over there. We were like, Where was this?
What does your ideal Saturday in Richmond look like?
There’s so many breakfast places I love so that’s really hard. I really like Harrison Street Cafe. I would probably get up and get a soy-sage breakfast burrito at Harrison Street Cafe, then me and Burger and Eric would go over to Class & Trash. We love just browsing around over there.
And then I really do love 8½, maybe like a little sammy at 8½ and eating at Scuffletown Park. I would love a little mozy around Carytown. I love gift shopping at Mongrel. And Eric and I love cooking and hosting. We just got ourselves one of those Ooni pizza ovens. So I feel like it has to end with us doing a bunch of grocery shopping and having a bunch of people over for pizza in our new backyard. That would probably be the tops.
You can only take one Richmond restaurant’s menu to a deserted island. Which one are you taking and why?
Okay, this might be a little bit of an embarrassing answer, but I’m gonna say The Village. I really am a big fan of breakfast food, but I also don’t want to not have, like, a club sandwich or spaghetti one day, you know what I mean? So I would have to say The Village because I know they have food for every hour of the day, plus really late-night greasy food. So you really have all your bases covered.
If you were taking someone on a tour of Richmond, where are three places you’re going?
I do love a walk around Maymont for sure. I feel like you have to go to Carytown, and I’m a big fan of Can Can — especially if it was fall time, a French onion soup at Can Can would be a lovely little afternoon lunch. And then how would we round things out? Oh, Cook Out. Getting a Cook Out milkshake would be how we end the night.
Fill in the blank: The coolest person I’ve met in Richmond is ______.
I’m going to be generous and say my boyfriend Eric. Eric and I met at a barbarians and librarians themed party in Stuart Court in 2015. We’ve been together for five years. He’s a few years older than me. Something that’s been great for this transition is he lived in Richmond post VCU grad, and I moved right to New York post-VCU. It was just so cool the way he had so many friends, and he’s really into tattoos. So he knows a bunch of different cool tattoo places — he has like a zillion tattoos. He also would host Blingo at Sticky Rice with his friend John who was in No BS! [Brass Band]. So we would always go to No BS! Brass shows.
There are so many people like Eric in Richmond. It’s a very small world, and having someone who had their own like people and places just made this city feel so much more like home to me, and like a place I really wanted to come back to.
What’s something every Richmonder should know about?
The Great Big Greenhouse. It’s a little bit of a drive, but there’s just this massive plant store. They have so many plant options. We just went there recently and I was telling someone about it. We picked up a Fiddle-Leaf fig tree for our living room. They were like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I’m like, there’s an enormous greenhouse that’s like 15 minutes away from us. So you should know about that.
Your fashion sense is top-notch. Are there any clothing places you swear by?
You know, I’m gonna be super honest. I recently started this social club, RVA Fatties, which is a fat-positive social group. And part of the reason why I wanted to start that is because there really aren’t a lot of plus-size options in Richmond. I was doing some research and it doesn’t seem like a lot has changed, unfortunately, in the last five years. And Richmond is not alone in that — even coming from New York City, the fashion capital of the country, the options are bad. There’s not a lot where you can go in store and try something on. Especially if you’re not familiar with a brand, the opportunity to try something on is really where a brand will earn your trust.
To me, one of my most memorable experiences clothing-wise living in Richmond was that my straight-size friends would shop at Short Pump mall, and the only mall that had something I could wear was in the opposite direction by like 40 minutes, and all that was there was like a Forever 21 plus section. And I personally am past the Forever 21 phase of my life.
I’m hopeful that with this group, we’ll be doing some clothing swaps and buy-sell-trade things that will give people a chance to try on clothes that they might not have otherwise. But I’m also hopeful because there’s so many cool thrifty places in Richmond and in my mind, there’s no excuse for those not to be doing a little bit better. Maybe some things have changed that I don’t know about. But that’s something that I would love to see grow in Richmond.
Can you talk about the social club — its inception, its goals + where you guys are right now?
RVA Fatties is an Instagram account that I started. The plan is to do some in-person events as well — I just scheduled our first one, we’re having an ice cream social this coming Saturday at Scuffletown Park. We’re probably gonna listen to the new Lizzo song that’s coming out.
When I moved to New York, I worked in plus-sized fashion for 4 years or so. I had a lot of opportunities to be in spaces that really centered plus-sized women. That was pretty transformational for me personally. I wanted to be able to give that to people in this community because I know it’s so needed. I use the word fat as a neutral descriptor. Fat isn’t a bad word. I see a lot of cool fat people on the streets. But it’s not necessarily a section of the population that you’re just like, Oh, hey, you’re like me. You maybe need a bit more organization in order to find people that have the same experience as you. My biggest hope is that this group will do that, and it already has. In just a couple days there were like 600 people following the page, and it’s still growing really rapidly.
My hope is just for people to have a safe space to talk about experiences that are unique to them, and also to just have a lot of fun. I’m hopeful to do things that might be uncomfortable in other situations as a fat person. For example, going to the river and being in your bathing suit might be uncomfortable if you don’t have an awesome group of friends. But when you know that you’re really not alone, I feel like it could be an awesome experience.
For me, very personally, I went to school at VCU for theater, and thought I was going to be moving to New York to pursue acting. Through a lot of my college experience, it was just like, you’re always going to be playing someone’s mom, or the funny fat friend. That’s when I really connected to fat communities online, and that just lit a fire under me in a way that acting wasn’t. It was around the time Ashley Graham was just on Sports Illustrated for the first time and there was just so much movement happening in that industry. So I was like, I’m just gonna go to New York and try to be a part of this. And it happened in a way so much bigger than I ever could have dreamed, honestly.
Throughout that journey I’ve been really career-focused. I think a big hope of mine moving to Richmond is to just find a little bit more balance, and be leaning in more to community and especially real-life community when the world is a little bit safer. Because I think that’s where you can really feel true authentic connection and feel like you’re really making a difference with the things that you’re doing. So yeah, that was a long winded answer [laughs].
How do you think about your work — this community-driven work as well as your work as an influencer — how do you picture it changing going from New York City to Richmond?
I’m actually really excited about this change. I think the pandemic told all of us you can be doing what you’re doing anywhere. And honestly, in our last apartment, we had just kind of outgrown that space. And during the pandemic we realized some things that were really important to us. I think that being here is going to give me the opportunity to show more aspects of myself with my community online.
But also, like I said, New York City is such a fashion-oriented city. There are a lot of opportunities for plus-sized people to connect specifically about fashion, and here there aren’t. So I feel like I’m able to give something that’s valuable and different and new here to people who haven’t experienced maybe some of that before. To me that feels really special because there are stylish, cool, confident fat people everywhere. Maybe they just need someone to say, hey, let’s meet up for ice cream, you know?
