Chiffon Her Way
Chloe Dao's Route to Fashion
By Zachary Thomas
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Following her dream with
persistence, Chloe Dao achieved her ultimate
goal: ownership of her own boutique. In the
process, this Houston resident proved
herself to all of America with a victory on
the reality show "Project Runway." |
In the past, if people wanted to observe the
latest fashion trends it meant traveling to the
fashion capital cities such as New York City, Paris,
Milan, and Tokyo. And now one more can be added to
the list. Locals don’t have to find themselves
purchasing plane tickets to find fashion. Instead,
they can fill up their gas tank and take a trip to
Houston. Among all the lights and traffic lies a
little boutique, full of life, yet so tranquil, it
is easy to forget that on the other side of the door
is the heart of the city. Chloe Dao, the owner of
Lot 8, has not only left her mark on Houston and the
surrounding area, but the nation as well.
Chloe knew as a child where she wanted to be in
life. She knew she did not want to spend hours upon
hours behind a law book or a scalpel. Instead she
found her calling spending hours in her garage as a
child engaged in building. Not taking hammer and
nails and building a framework, but taking scraps
from around the garage and designing her very first
piece of fashion, a pair of earrings, “I have a
picture of myself,” said Dao, “wearing the earrings
in seventh grade.” In her younger years, around age
10, she remembers sitting around the house and
watching CNN’s “Style with Elsa Klensch” with her
sisters. This is what created her interest in
fashion and design, but she knew it was not the
route her parents wanted her to take. Like most
parents, Thu Thien Dao and Hue Thuc Luong wanted
their child to grow up and have a more “stable”
career in the field of medicine or law. She knew she
wanted fashion in her life, so she took the closest
route she could. She decided to attend the
University of Houston and major in marketing. She
thought, “I can be in the fashion industry, maybe
not as a designer, but as a buyer.” Though she
quickly discovered it was not to her liking, she
stuck with it for about a year-and-a-half, then
decided it was the wrong route and that she had had
enough. “I’m going to really just follow my dream
and be a designer,” said Dao. And just like that,
she was done with putting what she really wanted to
do on the back burner. She stopped classes at the
University and enrolled in the design program at the
local junior college, Houston Community College (HCC).
After being at HCC for a year, she found that she
was ready to get a taste of the real world of
fashion. She packed her things and headed to New
York City where she found herself exploring the
Fashion Institute of Technology, or “The MIT for
fashion,” according to the FIT website. Once she had
found what was to be her home for the next few
years, Chloe could not turn away. She enrolled as a
student under the Associate’s degree program for
Patternmaking and graduated from the school in 1994.
While still attending classes, Dao was able to get
her foot in the door of the industry when she began
her paid internship for Madame Rossuel, a costume
couture shop on the Upper East Side of New York.
With this experience, Dao was able to see what it
took to run a small business, something she knew she
had planned in the future. “My main goal was to have
my own boutique and not design for anyone,” said
Dao. “It was something I definitely planned out.”
While in New York, Chloe was able to continue
working with various designers as well as round out
the skills it took to own her own store and design
her own clothing. With all this experience under her
belt, she started working towards her goal. Chloe
took all her recently discovered knowledge and
experiences, moved back to Houston and opened Lot 8.
In the summer of 2000, Lot 8 opened its doors to
the public, and over the past six years, its
reputation has grown tremendously. With personalized
styles designed by Chloe, shoppers are going to get
what it is they are looking for as well as designer
styles much less than the fashion capital cost.
Prospective shoppers can be on the look out for what
Dao calls “classic trendy.” For design ideas she
simply looks through her own personal closet. “I
think I’m pretty equivalent to the working female
who likes fashion. I can pull stuff out of my closet
and still love it.” Lot 8 offers women and men’s
clothing from Chloe as well as other designers. Her
boutique offers cocktail dresses, gowns, men’s pants
and shirts, and even sportswear.
Walking into Lot 8 is like walking into another
zone, the chaos from the outside world is quieted,
allowing designs and colors to connect with the eye
and warm the soul. No surprise – considering that
the store was born from a dream, and is run by
people who love what they do. The stores name, Lot
8, is in reference to Chloe and her seven sisters.
Each one of them plays a role in the Lot 8 business.
Diana, Linda, Trinh, and Jasmine do their part by
helping Chloe with cutting, sewing, and computer
work, along with advice and other little tasks. Kim,
a stay at home mom, handles more than a hundred
emails that come pouring in each day through the Lot
8 website and responds to every single one.
Christine works as a hair stylist in the back of the
store in Lot 8’s own salon. “Thank God for family,”
Chloe summed up the aid supplied by her sisters.
To some, she is just another designer. To others,
Chloe is the winner of Project Runway Season 2 that
aired on BRAVO, prevailing over 15 other talented
competitors. Chloe shined through to the judges;
supermodel Heidi Klum, designer Michael Kors, and
fashion director for Elle Magazine Nina Garcia. Her
hard work paid off. She pounded through different
designs ranging from taking the clothes off her own
back and redesigning a completely new and different
outfit, to creating an outfit for Barbie, to cutting
it close while making a whole dress out of nothing
but plants. With each assignment came hard work,
with the hard work came stress, but in the end came
reward.
Chloe’s life has not gotten any easier since the
win and all the publicity that followed. Quite the
contrary, Chloe commented, “Life before Project
Runway was extremely busy, now it’s extremely,
unbelievably busy.” With her quick fame from the
show, everything seems to be on a bigger scale now
for the 33-year-old designer. Bigger scale is a good
thing though. With her talent, hard work, and a
little luck, this Houston designer’s fashions just
might end up becoming nationally known where they
would be displayed at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman
Marcus along side the designs of Marc Jacobs,
Roberto Cavalli, and Jimmy Choo.
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