Heidi Dillon is lying upside down on an American flag with her legs in the air. She is surrounded by five or so people: her stylist, who continues to fluff her long locks and tug at her dress that keeps riding up around her thighs; a few of her employees who field calls from her husband; and photographer Bode Helm, who snaps shot after shot, assuring her she looks great from this angle. “My legs are killing me,” she informs Helm, flexing her feet. “Being sexy causes agony.”
We are in Dillon’s Turtle Creek home, a multi-level masterpiece of glass and wood designed by architect Frank Welch. The house rests on a steep incline of limestone, dotted with cactus and boulders, the floor-to-ceiling windows offering stunning views of the Dallas cityscape. It’s all very Urban Cowboy. Of course, Dillon isn’t the kind of buxom blonde you would expect to find perched in a grand house high above Turtle Creek’s affluent neighborhood. She’s not a social featherweight, she’s a heavy hitter, a natural born leader with more gravitas and moxie than a car load of women suffragists. As founder and CEO of the Fashionistas, Dillon has made waves in all philanthropic social circles of Dallas, garnering over 2,000 members since the non-profit’s 2005 inception and making a name for herself and our city on the stage of international fashion.
Today, she’s less a spearhead for a bourgeoning cultural institution and more of a glamour girl, dolled up in a long, blue gown from Shirin Askari’s collection, a young designer who was a member of the Fashionista’s F2 program during school. Looking gorgeous is hardly a stretch for Dillon, considering that, due to her position and impeccable style, her appearance is under constant surveillance. “I go to Whole Foods, and I always run into someone. Here’s what people do to me,” she says, then proceeds to eyeball me from toe to forehead and back again. “They aren’t even discreet.” Always being “on” is an occupational hazard, a fact that makes Dillon’s frequent trips to Malibu with her family so cherished. “We can just sit outside at a restaurant and people watch,” she muses. “No one knows me there, no one cares.”
And Heidi Dillon’s visage is only going to get more identifiable, what with a television series in the works on a major cable network (mums the word on the details while contracts are becoming finalized.) It comes as no surprise when you consider Dillon’s resume: a smart, sexy, East Coast artist and collector-turned Dallas socialite (a term she defines later on) who does business like Donald and fashion like Dior. Basically, a producer’s wet dream.
Growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, hardly a fashion mecca, Dillon made do by buying her favorite Vogue designer patterns and having her grandmother sew her dresses for school dances. She studied drawing and textile design at the University of Iowa, and received her Master's in Printmaking and Painting at the University of Massachusetts. In the early 1980s, she and her husband Bill moved to New York City, where she worked in advertising and volunteered at the Whitney Museum of Art. Her next venture took place in Columbia, South Carolina, a time Dillon calls her “ great tribulation period” where she started her own fitness wear line. When she finally came to Dallas, it was time to trade her Birkenstocks for a Birkin. “I had to step up my game,” she admits. “Everyone in Dallas is always so glamorous.”
At the shoot, we break for lunch, and Dillon’s 12 year-old son Dallas comes into the kitchen, playing with their over-sized Labradoodle Ralph and running his fingers through his shockingly blonde strands. He had just gotten his hair styled for the family shot. “He tried to shape my hair into a bowl,” he complains to his mother. “I hate that.” Dallas Dillon is used to these kinds of days; he often tags along to Dillon's events, rubbing elbows with the major players, getting cooed over the way adolescent boys pretend to despise. Dallas was a sort of a miracle for Dillon. After several failed pregnancies, she went in to the hospital to get her tubes tied and found out she was pregnant again. A parent for the first time at the age of 44, Dillon is a doting and attentive super-mom. The coming weekend is Dallas’s 13th birthday, and the two are talking about the big pool party. “Are you excited?” she asks Dallas. He nods nonchalantly. “Mostly about the Red Bull girls that are coming, right?” Hey, every event counts.
Dillon has been cutting her teeth at event planning since her arrival in Dallas. She joined the DMA so she could volunteer at the museum and a year and a half later she was asked to co-chair the Beaux Arts Ball, an event Dillon fondly calls “the beginning of the end.” Her fundraising eventually led her to Neiman Marcus, the downtown store now known as the location of the “light bulb” moment when she decided to create The Fashionistas, and then Dillon found her cause.
She may appear to be all business, but Dillon still considers herself a rebel. She is notably unapologetic when it comes to any hiccups in the biz (when I ask her about the whole Mordan Stefanov scandal, she replies, “I think it's yesterday’s news. But he was a funny queen, I ‘m always a sucker for a funny queen.”) She is also known to smuggle her drink of choice, Moet, in her purse to an event if champagne’s not on the menu. “I’m an artist, I have an artist’s temperament,” she explains matter-of-factly without a hint of irony or breathy flakiness. “I have my own rules, I march to the beat of my own drum. If someone tells me to do something, I probably won’t do it. That’s why I started the Fashionistas. I wanted to call the shots.”
Heidi Dillon’s library could be the tangible replica of her mind. There is a bookcase filled with Warhol, O’Keefe , volumes about the Beatles and Cartier and a copy of Lipstick Jungle. There’s a picture of Heidi on a shelf with a pixie-cut-donning Sharon Stone, and a plethora of frames holding photos of Dallas growing up. The things that make up her past, present and future are all represented and cared for, all the facets that make up a complicated, vivacious woman.
It became immediately apparent to me that Dillon doesn’t quite fit the mold for what I consider a “socialite”: someone who collects crystal dishware and spends their days picking out lavender tablecloths and gossiping about extra-marital affairs. This is because Dillon has a different definition for the term, one that has perhaps gotten lost over the years. “A socialite is a woman who works very hard every day of her life to raise money for charitable organizations, for non-profits. That’s where the social aspect comes in,” says Dillon. “You can’t be a real socialite unless you are raising money for a charity. A lot of young women in Dallas want to be socialites but don’t what the term really means. You have to pick a cause that you are passionate about, you don’t just get dressed up and go to parties and get your picture in the paper. You have to have a purpose.”
