Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Cupertino resident Dena May Kind created this bridal gown based on a Demetrios Sposabella design from 1984. The dress was designed for her client's first wedding, and redesigned for her third.

Fashion Sense

Cupertino resident runs her own dress-designing business

By Amy Jenkins

Dena May King's home looks like all the other houses on her block from the outside, but the inside shows evidence of a dress-making business. The living room is transformed into a workshop complete with a cutting table strewn with fabrics and scissors, and a bedroom is made into a sewing room where mannequins wear unfinished clothing.

King has been a resident of Cupertino for 20 years and started her custom clothing design and construction business called, "Dena May Originals," almost seven years ago. Growing up in Juneau, Alaska, King learned how to sew for friends and family at an early age because there were no stores or malls in the area, she said.

"To clothe the family, my mother would bring home bolts of fabric from Sears and Montgomery Ward," she said. "I learned to sew by hand at around 7 years old and did it for fun while growing up."

King moved to Cupertino to attend college and then became an entrepreneur after 30 years of working in the corporate world, because she had a passion for design, she said. Her background and experience in marketing, finance operations, manufacturing and telecommunications helped her start her own business, she said.

She said she enjoys making interesting, unique and one-of-a-kind garments using wire and rare fabrics she acquires from various sources. Before the fashion world had heard of "metal fabric"--a stiff fabric made with metal yarn that stays scrunched up when folded--she used it in designing an outfit for a mohair fashion show competition in St. Louis, Mo., a little more than a year ago. The fabric was given to her by someone who bought it at a buyers market in Paris.

King makes a wide variety of clothing, depending on her clients' requests. Among the obscure fashions she has created are a California raisin costume for a Stanford economics professor, red pajamas with slippers and one-piece bathing suits. Her varied repertoire also includes bridal gowns, evening wear, sports wear, costumes and accessories.

Her extensive résumé includes local and national fashion shows, where she has won awards for her unusual designs. She won top honors in 1999 for her re-creation of a 1922 Erte design called "The Improvised Cage." Erte, whose name was Romain de Tirtoff but went by the French pronunciation of his initials, was one of the foremost fashion and stage designers of the early 20th century.

The original Erte design was featured on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in July 1922 and was made for the New York Greenwich Village Follies. Out of 10 entries in the 1999 fashion show competition and fundraiser, sponsored by the American Cancer Society, called "The Roaring '20s," King won best construction, best replication and best entry into the 1920s.

"I was asked many times to participate in the fundraiser and decided that when I did I would make something unique to make a name for myself," she said.

The cage, which consists of 34,000 plastic pearls strung by hand on wire cage-shaped structure, took King and an assistant 2 1/2 months, 12 to 20 hours a day, to create.

Model Janet Knell wears a Dena May creation fashioned after a 1922 Erte design.

Photograph courtesy of Dena May King







King was invited to create a design for "Fashions for the '90s and the Future," presented at the High Technologies event in San Jose in 1998. For this event she created a vest--again using fabrics not common to the fashion world at that point. It was made out of oxidized silk with a polyurethane coating, oxidized iridescent silk, tencel, tencel linen, and micro fiber twill.

"The purpose for the high technology event was to examine what impact technology has had on the textile industry," she said. "Technology has really impacted the sewing business in the last 10 years."

The latest technological advances in fashion discussed at the event included growing color cotton, using lasers instead of tape measures to make clothing and using the computer to email size measurements to Vogue magazine so it can create a personalized dress making pattern.

Marty Reilly is one of King's clients and modeled Dena May Originals in the High Technologies fashion show. Reilly used to be an administrator for the Fremont Union High School district, has been a resident of Cupertino for 37 years, and has a background in clothing and textiles.

"Because of my background, I am very picky about clothing. Dena May is a perfectionist, she's very talented, and pays fantastic attention to detail," said Reilly, who also had King design a wedding dress for her daughter and a blouse designed for herself for her daughter's wedding. "She works with a client until they are completely happy with the product."

The most recent fashion show King participated in was Cañada College's annual fashion show Oct. 27. There she showed a bridal gown that she created for the bride, Donna Pack, after completely redesigning it from a 1984 Demetrios Sposabella original. When King was finished, it looked nothing like the original wedding gown. King removed the delicate petal appliqués, dyed them peach to match the new fabric, and then hand stitched them to the Shantung--a silky fabric with an uneven surface--and illusion netting.

She said her business keeps her busy five days a week, eight hours a day, because unlike many dress makers, she works alone. She is preparing to make something original for the Professional Association of Custom Clothier's contest in May of next year, called "The Denim Challenge." King is a member of the association and also the co-president of the San Francisco PACC Chapter.

"I love everything about my business," she said. "It's a great opportunity to serve the community, work with people, design, and be creative."

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To learn more about Dena May Originals, call 408.446.3267.

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