Week 2 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. The topic for this week is “Favorite Photo,” and I chose the photo above of my sister.
My Sister, Dee
My sister was born when I was 16 months old. I couldn’t say Diane, so I named her Dee. Many people lose their childhood names as they grow up, but Dee decided that she felt and sounded more confident with Dee. So all her life, she was Dee, and I was Lizzie.
Dee was a clothing designer most of her life. She talked our Mom into teaching us to sew when we were quite young, so she could start designing her clothes. She wanted to make clothes for Barbie dolls first, but our Dad didn’t allow Barbie dolls in the house.
First Design
My sister was eight when she designed and sewed this cape and scarf. As you can see, she was thrilled with her project. She probably made the dress underneath, but she loved the gold braid and the elaborate gold buttons on her cape. A couple of years later, she entered a sewing contest with a local fabric store and won first place! The prize was a new bicycle.
Dee Designs Through High School
We sewed most of our clothes through high school, and of course, Dee designed many of hers. My sister was always at least one year ahead of fashions. I never figured out how she did that or how she had the confidence to always be out of sync with other kids our age.
The yellow outfit in the main photo was a halter vest she intended to wear without the shirt under it, but our Dad wasn’t comfortable with her back showing. She designed the pants and hat as well. She was feeling amazingly confident about her design skills. When she designed the yellow outfit, she knew exactly what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. And she was only 14.
She spent time researching fashion schools the hard way since there was no internet. She narrowed her choices to two schools, but our parents didn’t allow her to apply. They told her she didn’t have the talent to be a Diane Von Furstenburg, Yves St. Laurent, or Halston, so she needed to find something more practical. They feared she would become slave labor for the big fashion industry.
Fortunately, Dee was as stubborn as she was talented and finagled a deal with our parents to study fashion at the University of Washington.
College
Dee started college, and we were both surprised that some of her science classes for fashion were harder than mine for engineering. She did well in all her classes, designing lingerie, dresses, athletic wear, and even my wedding dress.
Career
My sister started her career at Roffe designing ski jackets. She later moved to Vermont, designing for a company specializing in children’s ski wear. After that, she moved back to the West Coast when Nike hired her. Dee had expected to spend most of her time working in the Portland, Oregon, office, but they promoted her quickly. She had an office and separate staff in Oregon, Germany, and Korea. She enjoyed the work but got tired of spending so much time on a plane. When she met her future husband, she quit Nike and took a job back on the East Coast, designing tennis and motorcycle outfits.
She was working her way up to going out on her own with the name she had picked out back in high school – Dee Duffy Designs.
Her husband supported her desire to start her own design company when she married. She had to learn the business side of fashion quickly, but she had a lot of flexibility in her design work. During this time, she became very involved in designing socks in addition to tennis wear, ski wear, and motorcycle outfits.
When Dee’s daughter was in high school, Dee volunteered to help make costumes for the school plays in her spare time. She enjoyed costume design so much that she started looking into moving her business focus into costumes.
My Sister – Dying Too Soon
Shortly after deciding to investigate the viability of designing costumes full-time, Dee was diagnosed with breast cancer. The months of chemotherapy and radiation gave her a couple more years with her family and friends. But we lost her too early.
