A passion for fashion saved her from crashing.

• Position: Melanie G. Boone

On a fall day in 1989, Melanie G. Boone got in her Ford Escort station wagon, drove to Amethyst Treatment Center in Charlotte and admitted to herself that she was addicted to alcohol.

Four years later, the Charlotte Chamber named her Woman Entrepreneur of the Year for 1993 and the Charlotte Women Business Owners bestowed its top honor on her -- in part because she didn't hesitate to make her recovery part of her application. The disclosure took courage, Boone says. "It was saying, 'I believe in myself, where I come from, where I am and where I'm going.'"

After graduating from Webber College in Babson Park, Fla., Boone, now 34, moved home to Charlotte. In 1981 -- living in a $45-a-week YWCA apartment and driving a beat-up Volkswagen -- she started selling fashion accessories door to door. Now her Charlotte-based Melanie G. Boone Ltd. wardrobe consultant has seven employees and 1,200 clients.

Though drinking torpedoed her marriage, it didn't block Boone from building her business: "When you're visionary and an entrepreneur, nothing stands in your way," she says.

It's a way of life she...