“Fashion is my heart. I started in retail. I like to make people feel better about themselves. I started reading Vogue at about nine, I would sneak it up to my room. The community around me embraced me instead of teasing me about it. That says a lot about Mobile. I was in choir and theater and in the color guard. I got to completely be myself here and was never picked on. I was just Richard and people liked that. I graduated and got out of Mobile and moved to Los Angeles and worked on their fashion week. LA wasn’t for me, it wasn’t as happy and friendly as my Mobile was, so I moved back and started Mobile Fashion Week. We are about to have our 7th season. My heart is in the community and giving back with Camp Rap-A-Hope and Eye Heart World that works against human trafficking. You can do anything in Mobile, you just need three people to say let’s do it. Take a risk to be the front man and do something. I used to be scared of failure, but I have learned so much from messing up. My dream is to move on from the shows into the education behind it and helping other people to get into fashion. We have scholarships for people going into fashion, it may not be much, but it says we believe in you. We have to give creative people the support they need and I am always trying to help. I can’t turn it off.”