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It's the question I get asked almost every single day: "Where did the name DYL come from?"
The honest answer surprises people, because it has nothing to do with clothing at all. It starts with a box of sunglasses.
Before there was a store, there was me — a young mother with a family, waitressing to help make ends meet. I'd grown up watching my dad and my grandpa build their own businesses, and I wanted that same freedom for myself. My tips paid for groceries. On the bad days, they didn't stretch far enough to cover gas or laundry detergent, and that gap was devastating in a way that's hard to explain unless you've lived it.
A friend of my husband's handed me a box from the end of a relationship one day — inside were a dozen brand-new sunglasses, still in their bags. I thought, why not try selling these? I found a supplier, started ordering a few dozen at a time, and even with painful cross-border shipping costs, we had good profit as long as we sold each pair for $15–20.
Then Facebook groups started popping up as the place to sell things — this was before Marketplace, before even Pages existed. I built my own group, listed sunglasses, and would literally drive to people's houses with vintage suitcases full of them so they could pick out a pair. Not long after, I discovered jewelry wholesalers. My first order was maybe 15–20 pieces. It sold fast. That was the beginning of my trade show years — weekends spent at every show I could get into, all while working full-time doing kitchen design at a construction store (a job I landed with zero formal training, likely thanks to a couple of years flipping houses with my husband, and possibly my winning personality).
Through all of it, I was calling the business Dress Your Lashes.
When I opened my first physical store, we expanded the name to Dress Your Lashes Fashions and Accessories. Unfortunately, the timing collided with the eyelash extension boom. I had people calling and walking through the door constantly, expecting an eyelash appointment. I explained the name — its origin, the wordplay — more times than I can count, and honestly, it wore on me. I carried it like a weight, wondering if I should have thought it through more or chosen something else entirely.
But by then, it was the name. People knew it. They told their friends about it by that name. Changing it felt impossible.
When we moved into a bigger location, my aunt — who had supported me tremendously from the very beginning — suggested shortening it. That's how DYL Fashions was born, still an echo of Dress Your Lashes, still occasionally mistaken for it, but simpler.
When I closed during the pandemic and later reopened, I sat down with an advertising company and asked them point-blank: should I change the name? Their advice stuck with me — changing your name at that stage is expensive, and it means retraining every customer who already knows you. If it's not actually hurting the business, keep it. Own it.
So I did.
Not long ago, I overheard a teenager tell her friend, "I love all the DYL stores, I go there all the time." That one sentence shifted something in me. I'd spent years feeling self-conscious about a name I thought needed explaining or apologizing for — and here was someone who just loved it, no explanation needed.
I think we lean too heavily on other people's opinions sometimes, and when someone doesn't immediately understand our choices, it's easy to feel like we got it wrong. But this name has been mine since the very beginning. It started with a box of sunglasses and a woman trying to keep the lights on. It's part of my story, pivots and all — and today, I'm not carrying it like a weight. I'm owning it.