When Kimberly Dobine was first approached to join the cast of “Love and Marriage: Detroit,” she was hesitant. Now, she’s using the moment to highlight the city dear to her heart.
Following the first season of the show, which is featured on Oprah’s OWN television imprint, filmed in the Motor City, Dobine was approached by friend and former cast member Dr. Latoya Thompson after production was looking for referrals for people who would be good for the show. Despite saying she did not want to be included, Dobine’s friend took matters into her own hands and still put her name in the running, telling her to give it a second thought if the team happened to reach out.
Dobine did, and the rest is, as they say, history.
“I was extremely hesitant,” Dobine told BAUCE. “But then, I was like, what’s the harm in interviewing? So we did it and haven’t heard anything for months. Then, all of a sudden, we got an email that said they wanted to conduct a test with our family, and the test shooting turned into multiple scenes. We got confirmation that we’d be on the show.”
As an entrepreneur, Dobine has used her love for fashion to create a platform as a businesswoman that encourages others in the space to do the same. The founder of Posh and Popular, she has always had an affinity for providing women with the tools necessary to make their dreams within the world of beauty and fashion come true.
“It’s been an unexpected journey, like even this show situation,” she said. “ I started my brand as a blog 11 years ago. It started as a joke because I was that friend everybody reached out to for advice on what to wear. If you know anything about me, I’m a shop-girl. I always had a retail job, even working in corporate; I always had a second job working in retail because I enjoy fashion and discounts. I was always that girl, and my friends would drive me crazy by saying things like, ‘I’m coming up to the store. I need you to help me figure out something to wear for this date.’”
At the time, Dobine lived in Los Angeles and Atlanta, yet having friends who constantly phoned in for fashion advice inspired her to compile a one-stop shop for clothing inspiration that wouldn’t require her to receive messages throughout the day.
“I was like, I’m going to start a blog, and I’m going to give you guys all the tips, and then you can go there, so it was a joke, but they encouraged me to keep posting, even requesting posts around different types of content. I started getting people engaged, and this was 11 years ago before being an influencer had a name. It was not something that people were doing regularly. It just kind of grew.”
From there, it turned into requests for Dobine to hold in-person meetups, which in turn became events encouraging women to start their own blogs or write about the things that lit their power. Moreover, she wanted to push people to create content that feels normal to them. She turned the work she was doing for corporate clients into something that was her own. When Dobine was in LA, her day job included working as a marketing coordinator for one of the largest law firms in the country, so doing events on a large scale was almost second nature to her.
“I’ve always had a passion for it, but when I started doing events for my brand and thinking outside the box, we would curate events at different Black-owned boutiques or spas and salons, centering the conversations around that type of business and how we can support one another. Then it turned into me launching the Fashion and Beauty Summit, a weekend conference that women would travel from all over the country to attend.”
For 2025, she’s rebranding the event into the FAB Summit because she understands the importance of catering to women across all industries, not just those within the fashion and beauty space.
“This rebrand is because we love all things fab,” she explained. “Like being who you are is fab, and because it’s always kind of the hashtag, we’re just going to rebrand it to be the Fab Summit because I want to encompass everything. I’ve always talked about how to protect your brand. We’ve brought in attorneys to help women focus on the steps they need to take to protect their businesses and brands, but this time, we want to bring in accountants. We want to bring in people who are life coaches. Right/ I also want to focus on lifestyle, marriage, and family because, as a woman, you evolve into these different areas of your life, so my brand has to grow with me.”
Moreover, through the Posh and Popular Foundation, which Dobine launched in 2019, she has also launched initiatives centered around helping women in transition, whether it be women encountering abusive relationships and getting out of those situations or those coming out of the prison system with a passion for beauty and fashion.
“We want to help them rehabilitate their lives and go into the fashion industry, so that can look like giving them grants to buy a computer so they can start their own fashion or beauty-based business,” she explained. “That’s one of my biggest focuses, making sure that my foundation is back at the forefront. Another initiative is, of course, I’ve always been big on community, so I am making sure women can tap into the resources they need and continue to support and encourage them in their businesses in any way I can. I’m just excited.
“I think that anything you do will take a lot of work. It’s going to take a lot of time, effort and energy. This work also fuels me, so I’m excited to get back to it,” Dobine added. “There’s so much happening so quickly that I need to refocus, and I’m just really excited to get back focused on the things I’ve already had in place and see them come to fruition.
Looking toward the future, Dobine hopes her legacy will reflect her love for women and encourage them to pursue their dreams.
“I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that I want my legacy to be everybody who was connected to me, touched in some sort of way, and blessed in some sort of way. I’m huge on planting seeds and letting God grow them however he sees fit. I want my legacy centered around womanhood, family, and community. I do believe that we’re stronger together. There’s nothing on this earth that we can do alone.”
