InsaneJournal

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Mona Haight (nee Corso) had every opportunity to turn out bad. Her mother was a runway model and editor at Harper's Bazaar, thrusting Mona into the modeling world as soon as she was old enough to display her own personality in a pictorial. At eighteen, Mona was the winner of the Miss Fort Worth competition. She went on to take the title of Miss Texas, but (to her mother's chagrin) declined to go on to the Miss America pageant.

Instead, Mona spent the years after high school attending college in California, where she majored in fashion design and merchandising. Thanks to her mother's wheedling, she never quite escaped modeling, and continued to be featured in sporadic advertising campaigns throughout her education. Upon graduating, her mother pressed her to continue, and Mona agreed, but only after making clear that modeling was only a means to an end. Her feelings were that the advertising was really about the clothes, not the models, and the clothes were what she cared about.

In particular, she had an affinity for wedding gowns and formal wear, but this, her mother was quick to tell her, was a niche market and might be a hard business to start. Mona was undaunted, and took an apprenticeship with a Los Angeles-based designer, while taking the occasional modeling work and advertising herself as a coach for Miss America hopefuls. In 2001, armed with modest funds and enough prototype designs to satisfy anyone, Mona rented a workspace outside of LA, hired an assistant, and went into business for herself.

At first, she hung onto her "day job" as a modeling coach, and kept her first line of gowns conservative and elegant, to appeal to a wide range of consumers, the better to get her fledgling business off the ground. It was also in 2001, shortly after her gown line's second fashion show, a preview for the 2002 season, that she met her future husband, Eddie Haight, when the girl she had been coaching for disappeared from rehearsals, and was found inappropriately drunk at Eddie's LA club. After the missing girl had been found, a frazzled Mona remained at the club for hours, not so much drinking as nearly weeping to the man she had just met, over the stress of her two jobs, and her mother's lack of faith in her business.

Not long after that night, things began to look up, which Mona fully credits to Eddie's involvment in her life. His presence gave her the boost of confidence she needed to stop minding so much what her mother said (which, incidentally, seemed to make her mother respect her more), and tackle her budding business with a renewed sense of purpose. She cut back on the time she spent coaching young models and focused more on individualizing her gown line. In 2003, a floral-inspired collection garnered much praise and attention from a few big names from wealthy families seeking custom work.

Early next year, Mona Corso Designs will release its ninth annual line of ready-to-wear gowns, as well as its fourth for Mona's exclusive partnership with St. Pucci. She has appeared in four films directed by her husband, and they will be celebrating their first wedding anniversary on Halloween. Their son, Vincent, will be one year old on November twenty-second.