Today we’d like to introduce you to Iza Ewers.
Hi Iza, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I believe my journey began with a love for creativity, performance, and self-expression. When I was young, I was involved in activities like dance and cheerleading, and I was always drawn to costumes, fashion, and the freedom that came with performing, as well as the art of expression. I grew up around entrepreneurship, so I also developed an early understanding that creating your own opportunities could be just as important as waiting for someone else to give you one.
I began pursuing modeling professionally as a young woman, and while I had opportunities early on, I also experienced many of the challenges that come with not fitting the traditional standards of the modeling industry. I heard “no” more times than I can count, and I experienced firsthand how limiting the industry’s expectations around appearance, body type, height, and individuality could be. Eventually, I realized that I didn’t have to wait for an agency or another person to decide whether I was worthy of pursuing my dreams. I could build my own career, create my own opportunities, and use my individuality as a strength.
Over the past decade, that mindset has allowed me to grow beyond being a model. I have worked as a performer, model coach, talent liaison, scout, and industry professional, while continuing to build my own brand. I’ve had the opportunity to work with organizations and productions including Bureau Fashion Week, where I served as a Global Talent Scout, modeling agencies, Divine Timing Productions, and most recently Hybrid Nation. These experiences have allowed me to understand the industry from multiple perspectives—not just as talent, but from the agency, scouting, production, coordination, and educational sides as well.
That evolution ultimately led me to create DayDream Modeling. I founded DayDream because I wanted to create something different: an educational platform where models could learn more than just how to walk a runway. I wanted to help people understand the business of modeling, develop confidence, build their personal brands, recognize their value, and learn how to create opportunities for themselves. My vision of “New Age Modeling” is centered around individuality, inclusion, education, authenticity, and creating healthier spaces for talent to grow.
Entrepreneurship has become a major part of my journey as well. I’ve continued educating myself through Texas State University, completing certifications in how to start a small business and how to run a profitable small business. Those experiences have helped me understand that passion alone isn’t enough to build something sustainable—you also have to learn the business behind your vision.
Another important part of my journey has been mental-health advocacy. My own experiences with mental health and adversity have taught me the importance of compassion, resilience, and creating environments where people feel supported rather than judged. I became BE THERE certified, which gave me additional education in recognizing and supporting individuals who may be struggling. I try to bring that understanding into the way I work with talent and the community I am building through DayDream Modeling.
Today, I see myself as much more than a model. I am an entrepreneur, educator, mentor, talent professional, producer, advocate, and creative. Everything I’ve experienced—the rejection, the opportunities, the lessons, and the setbacks—has contributed to the person and business owner I am becoming. My goal now is not simply to build a career for myself, but to create opportunities for others and help show people that they don’t have to fit someone else’s definition of success in order to create a meaningful career of their own.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it has definitely not been a smooth road. In many ways, the difficult moments have been just as important to my story as the accomplishments. I have experienced rejection, being overlooked, missed opportunities, difficult professional relationships, and moments where I felt that my work and creativity were not being respected or recognized. I have also experienced situations where ideas, and creative work that I developed were used by others without giving me the recognition or consideration I believe creators deserve. Those experiences have been painful, but they have also taught me the importance of protecting my work, understanding my value, setting boundaries, and continuing to create regardless of who chooses to acknowledge me.
The past few years have also challenged me personally. More recently, I have experienced significant turbulence in my mental health while navigating difficult circumstances in my life, including the aftermath of a serious accident and the physical, emotional, and professional setbacks that came with it. There were moments when simply continuing to move forward required an incredible amount of strength. When your body, your mind, your career, and your plans are all being challenged at once, it can be difficult to remember who you are underneath everything you are going through.
But I have come to understand that resilience doesn’t always look like being strong every day. Sometimes resilience is resting. Sometimes it is starting over. Sometimes it is admitting that you are struggling and still deciding that your story isn’t over.
I am very much in the middle of what I consider my comeback story right now. I don’t say that because I believe I have everything figured out. I say it because I know that I am still here, still creating, still learning, still building, and still dreaming. I have had to redefine what success looks like for me and learn that rebuilding is not failure. Sometimes rebuilding is where the strongest version of you begins.
One of the most meaningful examples of that evolution has been my collection, Uniquely U. Last year, I took a major step outside of my comfort zone and launched my own designs and collections publicly for the first time. Uniquely U represents much more than fashion to me. It is rooted in the idea that people should be allowed to embrace who they are rather than constantly feeling pressured to become someone else’s definition of beautiful, successful, or worthy.
For me, fashion has always been a form of self-expression, but Uniquely U gave me another way to communicate something I deeply believe in: your individuality is not something you should have to apologize for. Your experiences, your differences, your imperfections, and even the things you have survived can become part of your story rather than something that disqualifies you from being seen.
That philosophy is also connected to my mental-health advocacy. Becoming BE THERE certified was important to me because I wanted to continue educating myself on how to recognize when someone may be struggling and how to be a supportive presence. My advocacy isn’t about pretending that I have all the answers or that life is always positive. It is about reminding people that they deserve compassion, that asking for help is not weakness, and that difficult chapters do not determine the ending of their story.
I think that is also why humanitarianism is so important to the way I approach my work. I don’t want to build a business that is successful only because it makes money. I want to build something that has purpose. Whether I am working with a model, mentoring someone, producing an event, creating a collection, or advocating for mental health, I want people to walk away feeling that they were seen, valued, and encouraged to believe in themselves.
The struggles have changed me, but they haven’t taken away my vision. If anything, they have made that vision clearer. I understand what it feels like to be told that you aren’t enough, to be overlooked, to have to fight for opportunities, and to question whether your dreams are still possible. Because I know that feeling, I want DayDream Modeling and the work I create through it to represent something different.
I’m still rebuilding. I’m still healing. I’m still learning. And I’m still becoming. But I no longer see my setbacks as evidence that I am failing. I see them as part of the story I am writing—and I believe the comeback is just as important as everything that came before it.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about DayDream Modeling, LLC?
DayDream Modeling is an education and talent-development platform that I founded back in 2017-2018 with the belief that modeling should be about far more than having the right measurements, walking a runway, or fitting into someone else’s definition of what a model is supposed to look like.
I created DayDream Modeling from my own experiences within the industry. As a model, I experienced firsthand how easy it can be for talented people to become discouraged because they don’t fit traditional industry standards. I eventually realized that instead of continuing to ask the industry to make room for people like me, I wanted to help create that space myself.
That vision became the foundation of what I call New Age Modeling.
DayDream Modeling focuses on education, empowerment, individuality, and practical industry knowledge. I work with aspiring and established models through model coaching, workshops, private training, talent development, scouting, and industry guidance. I also work as a talent liaison and have developed experience across multiple sides of the industry, including modeling, scouting, agency environments, production, event coordination, and talent management.
My experience has grown considerably beyond simply being in front of the camera. I have had the opportunity to serve as a Global Talent Scout for The Bureau Fashion Week, work with modeling agencies, collaborate with productions such as Divine Timing Productions, and currently work with Hybrid Nation, LLC. These experiences have given me a much broader understanding of how the entertainment and fashion industries operate behind the scenes. I understand what it means to be talent, but I also understand what it means to help develop, coordinate, scout, and connect talent.
One of the things I am most passionate about is teaching models how to become more self-sufficient. I don’t want someone to leave one of my workshops knowing only how to walk a runway. I want them to understand their value, communicate professionally, develop their personal brand, recognize opportunities, understand the business side of modeling, and ultimately understand that their career does not have to be completely dependent on someone else discovering them.
That entrepreneurial philosophy is a major part of my own development as well. I have continued my business education through Texas State University, earning certifications in how to start a small business and how to run a profitable small business. Those experiences have reinforced something I already learned through building my own career: creativity and entrepreneurship have to work together if you want to turn a passion into something sustainable.
Another part of DayDream that sets it apart is the emphasis I place on the human being behind the talent. My work in mental-health advocacy has deeply influenced the environment I want to create. I became BE THERE certified because I wanted to further educate myself on recognizing when someone may be struggling and learning how to provide meaningful support. I believe that models and creatives should be treated as whole people rather than products.
That philosophy also extends into my creative work. My Uniquely U collection was an especially proud moment for me because it represented my transition from simply participating in fashion to creating it. Launching my own designs and collections for the first time allowed me to communicate the same message through clothing that I try to communicate through DayDream: there is power in being uniquely yourself.
What I am most proud of about DayDream isn’t one particular event, workshop, title, or accomplishment. It is the fact that I have created something that reflects my values. I have taken the things I learned through rejection, adversity, entrepreneurship, modeling, performance, and personal growth and turned them into something that can potentially help someone else avoid some of the same obstacles.
I also want people to understand that DayDream Modeling isn’t about promising someone fame or telling them that becoming a model is easy. I believe in being honest about the industry. There are challenges, competition, rejection, and business realities that every creative professional has to navigate. My job is to help people become better prepared for those realities while also teaching them that they have more power over their careers than they may realize.
Ultimately, DayDream Modeling is about creating opportunities, developing people, and changing the way we think about modeling. I want to help build a modeling community where individuality is an asset, education is valued, creativity is protected, mental health is respected, and people are encouraged to build careers that are authentic to who they are.
If I can help someone walk into an industry that once intimidated them and leave feeling more confident, educated, empowered, and capable of creating their own opportunities, then I know I am doing what I set out to do.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson I have learned throughout my journey is that I have to give myself permission to be human.
For a long time, I believed that success meant constantly pushing forward. If I had a goal, I felt like I had to reach it no matter what was happening around me or inside of me. As an entrepreneur, that mindset can become especially difficult because there is always something else to build, someone else to help, an opportunity to pursue, a deadline to meet, or a problem that needs to be solved. When you are the person responsible for your business, it can feel like there is never an acceptable time to stop.
One of the hardest parts of my journey has been navigating entrepreneurship while also living with significant mental-health challenges. My mental health has affected my career in ways that people don’t always see. There have been opportunities I couldn’t take, shows I couldn’t attend, professional situations I had to step away from, and periods of hospitalization and recovery that interrupted the momentum I had worked so hard to build.
That can be incredibly difficult psychologically when you are already someone who struggles with how you see yourself and the world around you. There have been many moments where I felt like I was finally three steps away from reaching something I had spent years working toward, only to experience something that made me feel like I had been pushed three steps backward.
For a long time, I interpreted those setbacks as evidence that I wasn’t doing enough or that I was somehow failing. I had to learn that an interruption is not the same thing as an ending.
That has probably been one of the most difficult lessons for me to internalize.
Mental health isn’t always visible. Someone can look completely capable from the outside while fighting an enormous battle internally. In an industry built around appearance, image, performance, and constant evaluation, that reality can become even more complicated. Models are expected to show up, perform, look confident, network, create content, travel, audition, maintain their appearance, and constantly market themselves. There is often very little room for the reality that we are human beings who can become overwhelmed, struggle, need treatment, experience trauma, or simply have days when functioning is harder than it looks.
My own experiences have made me passionate about advocating for greater understanding of mental health, invisible illnesses, and disabilities within the modeling and entertainment industries. I want to help cultivate environments where talent doesn’t have to hide their humanity in order to be taken seriously.
That doesn’t mean lowering standards or removing accountability. It means recognizing that compassion and professionalism can exist at the same time. It means understanding that someone needing support doesn’t make them unreliable, weak, or incapable of having a successful career.
My BE THERE certification was one step in continuing my education around how to recognize when someone may be struggling and how to be a supportive presence. I wanted that knowledge not just for myself, but because I believe that people who work with talent have a responsibility to understand the human beings behind the performances.
I have also had to learn to extend that same compassion toward myself.
That has been much harder than extending it to other people.
I am still learning that resting does not mean I have quit. Taking time to process what I have experienced does not mean I have lost my ambition. Having to rebuild does not mean everything I built before was wasted.
Sometimes the strongest thing an entrepreneur can do is acknowledge that they are struggling and take the necessary time to recover rather than destroying themselves trying to maintain an unrealistic image of being okay.
My mental health has cost me things. I won’t pretend that it hasn’t. But it has also taught me empathy, self-awareness, patience, resilience, and a deeper understanding of the people I want to serve. It has made me more intentional about the culture I want to create through DayDream Modeling.
The lesson I am still carrying with me is that my timeline is not a measure of my worth.
I may have to take a different route. I may have to stop and start. I may have to rebuild something I thought I had already built. I may have days when moving forward looks completely different than I imagined.
But three steps backward doesn’t erase the three thousand steps that came before them.
I am learning to stop measuring my life by how quickly I reach the finish line and start measuring it by whether I continue moving toward something that matters to me.
And right now, I am still moving.
Contact Info:
- Website: linktr.ee/daydream.modeling
- Instagram: https://linktr.ee/Iza.D.Lovely
