Fashion entrepreneur Chloe Dao becomes the latest special guest for Wine & Food Week

THE WOODLANDS, TX – Fourteen years ago, organizers of the annual Woodlands area event Wine & Food Week had the good fortune to work with Chloe Dao. Recently, they announced a reunion with this Houston icon as a special anniversary guest for this year’s event in June.

Chloe Dao, a proud Vietnamese Asian-American, small business owner, and fashion entrepreneur was born in Laos as the sixth of eight girls. She is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, with eight years of experience in the New York luxury fashion scene. In 2000, she launched the LOT 8 boutique in Houston and in 2021 moved to M-K-T Heights.

She was catapulted to international fame after winning Project Runway Season 2 in 2006. As a fashion designer, businesswoman and style expert, Chloe has been in Forbes, People, TIME, ELLE, and the Wall Street Journal and featured on CNN, The View, and Good Morning America. She was an ambassador for Barbie’s 60th Anniversary “You Can Be Anything” campaign and has collaborated on projects with the NFL and Dove. Chloe has been exhibited at the Smithsonian and is permanently archived in Google Arts & Culture in Houston Community College’s Fashion Archive.

Chloe has made a big impact in the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community in Houston and beyond. Most recently, in a collaboration with the Houston Public Library, Rice University and the Chao Center for Asian Studies, Chloe celebrated AAPI month with fellow Asian designers in a fashion show. She has also participated in a roundtable discussion led by MSNBC’s Katie Phang, for a screening of “The Culture Is: AAPI Women Thursday,” a four-part series highlighting diverse women. At SXSW in Austin, Chloe was on hand for the Asian American Artists and Entrepreneur Meetup.

She joins other special guests such as Chef Austin Simmons of TRIS, who is currently in charge of culinary for the Woodlands Hospitality Group, overseeing the Black Walnut Cafe concept with nine locations in Texas, and The Kitchen breakfast/lunch/dinner fast-casual concept in The Woodlands; Kathy Womack, artist and creator of the Women in Wine series whose cheery posters have graced many a Wine & Food Week program cover and collected by thousands of guests during the past 20 years; Patricia Sharpe, executive editor of Texas Monthly whose story about being a restaurant critic, titled “Confessions of a ‘Skinny Bitch,’” won a James Beard Foundation award for magazine food writing in 2006 and who was inducted into the Wine & Food Week Hall of Fame in 2023 and returns this year as a Culinary Judge; Chef Masaru Fukuda of Pacha Nikkei, defending champion of the 2023 Chef of Chefs Award; Katie Stone, The Cleverley Stone Foundation; Katie Stone, president of The Cleverley Stone Foundation, which produces Houston Restaurant Weeks and Eat Drink HTX; speed-painter Harvey Dunn as a part of PaintJam; Monique Studak, Wine Educator and the moderator of the Ladies of the Vine Tasting; Guy Noel Stout of Stout Family Vineyards; Carlos Ramos of Latin Bites and winner of the Chef of Chefs Award in 2016; and Michael Cordua, a pioneer of the Latin-American culinary movement in the United States and who created award-winning Houston-area restaurants including Américas in River Oaks and The Woodlands; Churrascos in River Oaks, Westchase, Sugar Land, Memorial City and Champions; Amazón Grill; and Artista.

The 2024 Wine & Food Week will take place June 3 - 9 at various locations throughout The Woodlands. It is one of the nation’s top culinary and wine events spanning a full week of offerings. 500 wines, 60+ chefs from across the globe, presented by H-E-B and featuring the Chef of Chefs competition presented by Goya Foods.