We’re doing something a little different with this week’s Highlight Home of the Week, sponsored by Lisa Peters, Senior Loan Officer with First Horizon. Rather than taking you inside one of Oak Cliff’s distinctive homes, we’re visiting a neighborhood business that’s helped make the area such an interesting place to live.
There were days when Deavon Moore would unlock the doors at her new clothing store on W. Davis Street, spend the day surrounded by carefully selected merchandise, and close up without a single customer having walked through the door.
Not exactly what she’d envisioned after spending 15 years buying menswear for Nordstrom. Moore built a career from the intern level up with one of the country’s best-known retailers, helping open Nordstrom locations across the country. But opening her own store in Oak Cliff was an entirely different proposition.
Those early years brought plenty of tears and second-guessing. “Oh my God, did I make a mistake?” she remembered wondering.
It was an entirely different era of Oak Cliff, too. Five blocks east, Bishop Arts was already drawing shoppers and diners, but that activity hadn’t yet reached Moore’s stretch of W. Davis Street in 2016.
There were vacant storefronts and buildings under construction. Moore remembers Joy Macarons and the home-goods and interiors shop Set & Co. among the few businesses nearby. Even finding somewhere to grab lunch wasn’t easy.
“Set & Co. was way before their time,” she recalled, adding that the shop would fit right in among the businesses on the block today.
There weren’t the coworking spaces that now bring people into the neighborhood during the day, or the lighting that helps connect West Davis to Bishop Arts. Tyler Street was still one-way.
Moore had opened DLM Supply believing Oak Cliff needed a standalone men’s clothing store. But getting customers through the door would take more than finding the right merchandise.
Ten years later, DLM has expanded into the neighboring storefront with women’s clothing and gifts, and Moore has opened a separate baby-and-toddler boutique, DLM Tots, in Bishop Arts. The neighborhood around her has changed considerably, too.
From Nordstrom to Her Own Storefront
Moore’s interest in retail started long before she landed her first buying job.
Her grandmother owned a clothing store in Oklahoma City, and Moore still has some of the shopping bags she used. As a little girl, she’d ask her grandmother about the business, then go to friends’ houses, pull out bedsheets, and put on fashion shows.
She studied fashion at TCU and became the first intern at Nordstrom’s Galleria Dallas location when the retailer arrived in the market. A senior leader overseeing women’s buyers took her under her wing, giving Moore opportunities to learn about buying budgets and merchandising that went well beyond typical internship duties.
“But I wouldn’t have had that opportunity if someone didn’t see in me how passionate I was about it and how eager I was to learn,” Moore said.
After graduation, Nordstrom was her first call. She helped open the Stonebriar store in Frisco and worked on other openings in Texas and Georgia. Her career eventually took her to Seattle.
An opportunity through Esquire magazine brought her back to Dallas to help launch CLAD, an online menswear business. It was an early venture into e-commerce, but the website had been live just six weeks when its financial backing through JCPenney was pulled.
Moore landed at St. Bernard, where she spent four years. The idea of opening her own store never went away.
“There’s never going to be the right time to do it,” she recalled thinking.
Eventually, she decided to take the leap.
Why West Davis?
By then, Moore was already living in Oak Cliff. She saw something in the neighborhood that reminded her of the creative communities she’d encountered elsewhere, but with a stronger sense of connection among residents.
“I felt a community that I hadn’t felt anywhere else,” she said.
She also saw a gap in the market. Oak Cliff had architects, entrepreneurs, and other creative professionals whose personal style didn’t necessarily match what was being sold in more traditional Dallas shopping destinations.
Moore believed those customers would appreciate independent clothing brands and pieces that weren’t immediately recognizable by their labels.
She sought out lines such as Portuguese Flannel, La Paz, Wax London, and Rodd & Gunn, building an assortment around quality and individuality rather than prominent logos.
“I don’t carry a lot of outward-facing logos or brands,” she said.
But she understood a neighborhood store needed to become part of the neighborhood.
Moore began participating in local events, supporting neighborhood schools, and making herself visible outside the store.
“They’ve got to see that you eat in the neighborhood,” she said.
She wanted residents to think of DLM before driving across the Trinity River to shop elsewhere.
Those connections helped her build a customer base. So did the occasional shopper who reminded her that she’d made the right decision.
Moore remembers days when someone would walk in, love what she was doing, and make her think that if she could find five more customers like that one, she’d be doing just fine.
A Store That Grew With Its Customers
DLM began as a menswear boutique, but Moore eventually expanded into the neighboring storefront to add women’s clothing. Children’s merchandise came later, as she watched Oak Cliff families grow and recognized another gap in the neighborhood’s shopping options.
Eventually, she moved the baby-and-toddler merchandise into its own shop, DLM Tots, in a small building in Bishop Arts that she estimates is about a century old.
The expansion gave Moore something she’d envisioned throughout her retail career: a neighborhood version of Nordstrom, where customers could find clothing alongside gifts for birthdays, baby showers, housewarmings, and other occasions.
“I really tried to encompass making DLM a lifestyle store and a community,” she said.
The two locations also give Moore an interesting perspective on how Oak Cliff’s retail landscape has evolved.
DLM Tots, in the heart of Bishop Arts, draws tourists and visitors who may be exploring the neighborhood before dinner or making a stop before leaving Dallas.
On a busy Saturday, Moore said, the smaller shop might see twice as many visitors as the main store. But those shoppers may buy only a small gift or souvenir.
The West Davis location operates differently.
“I’ve got to see them again and again,” Moore said of the customers who sustain the main store.
Those repeat visits are essential to a business built around the people who live nearby.
The Oak Cliff Connection
Moore lives in Stevens Park, and her affection for Oak Cliff extends well beyond its retail possibilities.
She sees it in the people who move into the neighborhood, fall in love with it, and find ways to stay even as their circumstances change.
Moore says she regularly meets new residents in the store who are still discovering the neighborhood. When she asks what they think of Oak Cliff, they tell her about the friendly neighbors, the parks, and the sense of community.
But some Dallasites still have an outdated impression of the area.
Longtime Oak Cliff resident Lisa Peters has a name for that reaction: the “Oak Cliff O,” the slightly skeptical “Oh” that sometimes follows when someone says where they live.
Moore recognizes it immediately.
“People still get that,” she said. “If you even drove through half of the neighborhoods, you would be like, these are the most beautiful homes I’ve ever seen.”
And there’s something else she appreciates about Oak Cliff’s housing stock.
“There’s not a cookie-cutter house over here,” she said.
Moore points to Peters as an example of the neighborhood’s staying power. Peters has lived in different parts of Oak Cliff over the years, but Moore can’t imagine her leaving.
That loyalty is something Moore understands.
More Than a Place to Shop
Moore’s involvement in Oak Cliff has grown alongside her business.
She serves as vice president of North Oak Cliff Greenspace, which works on green spaces around Stevens Park Golf Course and along Coombs Creek. She also helped organize the golf course’s centennial celebration in 2024.
That experience gave her another idea. Individual neighborhoods had their own happy hours and block-wide get-togethers. Why not all of Oak Cliff?
She approached Stevens Park Golf Course about hosting a monthly neighborhood happy hour, with room for families and children.
The gatherings bring neighbors together over drinks and food, often with a local restaurant helping sponsor the event, while everyone enjoys the views and sunsets from the golf course.
“I didn’t want everything to always be in the store,” Moore said.
She wanted to contribute to the community in ways that had nothing to do with selling clothes.
That approach also reflects what she’s learned about building a small business. Customers don’t simply appear because a store has good merchandise or an attractive location.
Moore still looks for opportunities to introduce DLM to new shoppers, whether through a neighborhood event, a school holiday market, or a pop-up in another part of Dallas. She’ll be at Market in the Meadow, 9373 Whitehurst in Lake Highlands on Nov. 7-8.
“You’ve got to be driving your own business,” she said.
Ten Years Later
A decade after opening DLM Supply, Moore is still doing the work that first drew her to retail: discovering brands, selecting merchandise, and thinking about what her customers might want next.
She still gets excited when she finds something and immediately knows who should have it.
But owning the store has required her to learn far more than buying clothes.
There’s marketing, social media, staffing, inventory, website updates, and the daily work of keeping a business running. Moore has learned that she can’t do everything herself.
She’s also learned the value of teaching employees and giving them room to take ownership of their work.
In some ways, she’s passing along the same encouragement she received as a young Nordstrom intern.
And when asked what she’d tell the little girl who once made dresses out of bedsheets and dreamed of owning a clothing store, Moore didn’t hesitate.
“You can do it,” she said. “It’s gonna be a lot of work though.”
