BonDeCroft Elementary student headed to New York City

Caitlyn Taylor

Caitlyn Taylor, or Caity as the BonDeCroft second grader is known by her best friends, has been granted the honor of representing Charjean Couture on the runways of New York City’s Gotham Hall during the industry’s semi-annual Fashion Week being held the second week of February.  Caity will be leaving for New York, on Feb. 11.

“I’ve never been to New York,” Caity said, “I’ve been working hard at pageants since I was three, so I’m pretty excited to have been chosen for this show.”

According to Caity’s grandmother, Amy Taylor, the 8-year-old, who holds numerous titles, including recently being crowned Miss Tennessee Elegance and being an America’s Elegant Miss delegate for Miss Tennessee, is having custom clothes made for her to wear while she walks the runway over Valentine’s Weekend.

“I get to be a model,” Caity added.

Along with spending approximately an hour getting her hair and makeup done and dressing up in one of her approximately 70 dresses a couple of times a month, pageants and titles mean service work and having a platform – even at Caity’s young age.

“My platform is called Caity’s Classroom,” the second grader said proudly. “I want every student in my school to have all of the supplies they need to get the education they deserve and to be successful.”

Along with the school supplies she has been collecting for BonDeCroft Elementary students, Caity recently helped supply the Special Education classrooms at Woodland Park with items like pullups and wipes that she learned teachers were purchasing themselves.

Caity has conducted service projects that include providing food and treats for emergency workers, filling Little Pantries and Little Libraries around the community, and most recently learning to crochet so that she could help supply “ear savers” to health-care workers to aid in wearing their protective masks.

While in New York next month, Caity has a big project to work on. She will be involved in a photo shoot for Cosmopolitan Magazine that will be aimed at bringing awareness to the on-going problem of sex-trafficking across the globe.

“I want her to be able to have these experiences and to be able to grow in what she wants to do and what she wants to achieve,” Taylor said about the opportunities the pageant world has opened up for her granddaughter. “Having some of those contacts won’t hurt her future either.”

That future, according to Caity, will have plenty more runways in it.

“I want to be Miss USA,” she says boldly, something else her grandmother attributes to her pageants.

“She has always been a little outgoing, but, over the past couple of years, I’ve just watched her confidence grow,” she said.

While poise and confidence are both important, Taylor said she is most proud of her granddaughter’s compassion.

“She has such a big, big heart,” she said. “She always makes sure to compliment other girls - not just simple compliments but specific things to make them feel good about themselves. She is always wanting to give some of her dresses away to girls who can’t afford new ones and is always teaching newer participants what it is the judges are looking for.”

“She really is very humble too,” she continued, saying that Caity had the perfect response for her grandmother when they had a disagreement about which dress she should wear at a recent event. “When I asked what she was going to do if she lost, she looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to give the other girl a big hug and tell her congratulations and that she deserves that crown.’ I couldn’t have been prouder.”

Along with her grandmother, Caity will be joined by her parents and older brother for her big trip in a couple of weeks, and, while she loves her “girl time” weekend trips with her grandmother, she is happy to have them along for the experience.

“I am really happy that we will all get to see the Statue of Liberty and that they all get to see me in my new outfits,” she said, unfazed by the magnitude of the experience she is going to have. “That is all.”