A former Emporian has turned an in-home business and an old sewing machine into a flourishing fashion design and manufacturing enterprise — with a couple of adjunct businesses that have developed as a result.
Pat Dahnke, daughter of Charles and Nadine Hopper, was in town this month to visit her family. She made time to sandwich in an interview to talk about her company, Designs by Pat, which she operates from headquarters on her ranch outside Waller, Texas, a suburban of Houston.
Dahnke’s ranch actually is closer to Fieldstore, near Waller, she said.
“It has one stop sign — no light — a couple of churches, a couple of liquor stores and a feed store,” she said, describing the little town.
The town apparently is the only thing small that has any connection to the business.
Designs by Pat garments and accessories are sold in more than 300 upscale boutiques across the country, from Sak’s Fifth Avenue to Aspen to The Trois Estate at Enchanted Rock, Texas. Will Wyatt’s store in Overland Park also carries her designs, as will a new boutique opening soon north of Kansas City International Airport.
Texans have a fondness for elegantly dressy clothes, as well as “cowgirl glitz,” Dahnke said. Designs may be varied just a bit for sales in Missouri, Florida, Montana and elsewhere.
“You know in Texas we can’t get enough of anything,” she said. “Sometimes in other areas of the country, we have to tone it down some.”
Designs by Pat are made at Dahnke’s factory at the ranch. She long ago stopped sewing her own designs and has employees who do that, while she maintains the creative and marketing sides of the growing business.
“Probably 40 percent of the time, I’m not home,” she said. The rest of the time she is on the road or in the air, traveling from store to store.
But Dahnke’s success did not come without a heavy price.
Before becoming a fashion designer, Dahnke operated three clothing stores — Damsels in Disdress — in the Houston area.
The design business took form during a devastatingly low point in her life. The oil boom had gone bust and sent Houston’s economy spiraling down in the mid-1980s, about the same time her son, Kent, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer most common in children.
“I sold two of the stores out of the hospital room,” Dahnke said. “I can say I’ve been peddling rags for 39 years, but I’ve actually been designing since 1985. That was when my son died.”
Plagued by an inability to sleep afterward, the loss pushed her into designing clothing.
“The whole line was a healing process coming out of that,” she said. “If I could go to sleep, fine; if I couldn’t, I’d work on leather. That’s how I pulled myself out of it.”
She resurrected an old sewing machine she’d purchased as a freshman at Emporia High School, and began designing and sewing. The machine would skip a stitch every few stitches, so she cut out leaf-shaped pieces of leather and glued them on over the stitching glitches, cascading them down the front of the garment. In the public’s mind, that was just what the garments needed. Sales took off and so did Designs by Pat.
Since then, the business has burgeoned. Dahnke has created two additional businesses that have showrooms in Dallas; one is a gift shop and the other features home furnishings. Stock in the showrooms grew from Dahnke’s determination not to waste the pieces of hides left over from her line of Western fashion. She calls one line Table Scraps — for decorating buffets and low tables, for example — and many items use the leftover hides.
Her focus, however, remains on the dresses and accessories. She has designed and developed several theme lines, including Western, Native American, Victorian, and Safari. The garments may be exceptionally dressy, like the exclusive designs her customers request for the Cattle Baron’s Ball, or they may be expensively casual, for wearing at horse shows and dressing up after rodeos.
She also specializes in designing gowns and accoutrements for weddings, using leather or soft, supple fabrics with yards of lace for brides, bridesmaids and even the horses who transport the wedding party.
“They come to me for the unusual, the different, the window dressing. ... That’s what I’m known for,” she said.
Dahnke has been named Texas Designer of the Year three times since 2001, has been the subject of a FOX News feature, numerous magazine articles and has been a featured designer at countless major events, including the 2005 inauguration of President George W. Bush.
Sponsors of one of the awards came to her home, collected 30 of her designs and took them for an exclusive fashion show to honor Dahnke. The show was going well until a model appeared on the runway wearing one of her signature long, fringed belts over short shorts and a shoulder shawl worn in a way Dahnke had not intended.
“She was wearing a diamond,” Dahnke said.
And the diamond in the model’s navel and the elbow-length shawl was all she wore from the waist up.
“And I immediately went down in my chair,” Dahnke said, laughing at the memory, “and everybody stood up and started clapping. I was going to put it over denim jeans and a turtleneck. That’s not the way I saw it.”
What she does see, though, are clever ways to make the Designs by Pat line unique and in demand.
She designs the colors and styles she “sees” for the hides and sends the designs to a company in New York to have them dyed, acid-washed or even pressed into “mock croc” leathers.
Her line of ball caps feature hair-on leather bills and sparkling Austrian crystals.
“They really glisten when you’re out in the sunlight,” Dahnke said. “If you think of uses for them, it’s when you get off the yacht, the cure for ‘hat hair,’ after you’ve been cutting (cattle), exercising. They like to wear something that’s fun and colorful.”
An Aspen, Colo., boutique at the base of a ski slope sold out of caps almost immediately.
“They come off the ski slopes and they want bling,” she said, with the warm laughter that frequently marks her conversation.
This month, Dahnke had draped a sofa at her parents’ home with samples of accessories like collars, dressy corsets with shaping stays, draping ruanas, cell-phone cases and belts, with and without long leather fringe.
Dahnke incorporated what she calls “old-time slap bracelets” into a fun accessory. With a light tap, the mink-covered slap bracelet kicked into action and wrapped around her wrist.
The belts, though, are what have caught on nationally.
“So this is the hottest piece I’ve ever designed and they have just exploded,” Dahnke said of the belts, which bear no resemblance to a traditional belt.
The wide, reversible belts — often with subtle or brightly colored motifs on one side and a solid color on the other — appear to be cut on the bias, with a subtle flare to ease from just below the waist to the hips. Strong magnets hidden within the belts allow wearers to easily change broaches or pins to coordinate with their outfits.
In addition to dressing up an outfit, the belt uses the stability of cowhide to tuck in tummies and create a slimmer silhouette.
“Wearing it clear down here,” she said, gesturing toward the hips, “it kind of lengthens the waistline and gives you that hourglass figure.”
The Designs by Pat line is intentionally designed to flatter all figures, whether perfect or somewhat flawed. Dahnke keeps in mind that women like to appear tall and lithe, and the flowing lines of her dresses reflect that illusion.
When Dahnke stopped in Emporia this month, she’d recently finished several days of photographs and interviews for an upcoming feature in “Southern Living” magazine and had just come off the 8-day Salt Grass Trail Ride to promote the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, a major event that raises funds for scholarships. For six of the days, she rode one of her horses; for the other two, she drove a wagon that held a portable restroom.
It was all for a good cause with the bonus that horseback riding is a favorite pastime for Dahnke, who grew up yearning to be a cowgirl with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans among her heroes. (She eventually met Evans when they were seated side-by-side on an airplane flight.)
At the ranch, Dahnke can indulge the outdoor side of her nature. Her daughter, Tara, operates a race-horse training stable on the property, along with their own horses. They keep Paints, Quarter Horses and Arabians to ride and are adding a Lucitano, bred for jumping.
There, too, Dahnke gives refuge to a variety of wildlife, including Sika deer. One of them, named Miracle, grew into a house pet after it was born atop a fire ant hill. The ants ate into the baby’s cornea and other soft, moist tissue and, when Dahnke took it to a veterinarian, he told her it would be a miracle if the little deer lived.
She kept it in the bathroom of her home, nursing it into health and housebreaking it. Miracle now is 11 years old.
“He is my favorite pet,” Dahnke said. “He jumps in the van and goes to get the mail. He loves to go in the car.”
An 8-foot game fence protects the wildlife and the horses from hunters and dogs.
Dahnke is perfectly at home in the life she’s created for herself on the ranch. It is both a workplace and a refuge, and she can find no fault with that. It’s a place where she can thrive, personally and professionally.
“It’s wonderful to have a passion for something in life,” Dahnke said. “My passion is designing — and riding horses.”
kansasgirl (anonymous) says...
Gayzettesux, you must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Can we say jealous or what!!! I am from Emporia and live in Dallas and have heard many good things about Pat's clothes and accessories. If someone wants to pay good money for it, why not?.. And knowing that she is from my hometown makes me very proud. It just shows what Kansans are made of. Have a better day.
April 12, 2008 at 5:54 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )