People. Energy. Community.

A few reasons we live, work and play in Oak Cliff.

Thinking, breathing, living Oak Cliff everyday.

Nine ‘Cliff Dwellers’ collectively represent over 125 years of residency in The Cliff. We are proud to be a part of a thriving community with energy, soul and passion unique to our area. We collectively live in six of the many distinctive Oak Cliff neighborhoods, and would love for you to choose an OC neighbor to help with your next real estate purchase or sale.

No sweat

Mizzen + Main produces dress shirts made of technical fabrics

Kevin Lavelle knew his idea would work the day he came home wearing his prototype, a white dress shirt made of technical fabric.

Lavelle first had the idea for sweatwicking dress shirts while working as a summer intern on Capitol Hill when he was a freshman at SMU in 2005. He saw a staffer rushing into a meeting, his shirt drenched with sweat. >

On that day last year, when Lavelle left for work in a regular white dress shirt and returned home to Oak Cliff in the prototype, his wife, Jen, didn’t notice the difference.

“When I saw it on the hanger, I wasn’t sure,” he recalls. “Until that moment, I wasn’t sure it was going to work.”

Now the company he started with partners Web Smith and Steven DeWitt, Mizzen + Main, offers 12 dress shirts in sweat-wicking fabrics as well as two Henley shirts.

Since the company launched in July 2012, the market has responded well, Lavelle says.

“A lot of people buy them all,” he says. “The overwhelming response is, ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this before?’ ”

The shirts are available for $58-$125 each online as well as in Pebble + Pine golf boutique in the Bishop Arts District and Warehaus in the West Village.

Lavelle worked as an international management consultant for two years before working in emerging energy technology for the Hunt family of companies.

He quit his job in 2011 to develop the Mizzen + Main shirts.

“It was an incredibly difficult journey to find all the manufacturing components I needed,” he says.

For starters, he tested about 5,000 fabrics.

Fashion and garment manufacturing are difficult industries to navigate, he says. Besides that, he was asking for something that had never been done before. There are plenty of cut-and-sew houses that will produce dress shirts. And there are plenty that will produce garments made of stretchy fabrics. But there are very few that will do both, Lavelle says.

He couldn’t find a manufacturer in Texas, so he went with one on the East Coast.

Mizzen + Main now is working on producing a sport coat made of technical fabric, and plans are in the works for a flagship store in Columbus, Ohio, the home of partner and SMU alumnus Web Smith.

Recently, the company provided shirts for the announcers of the CrossFit Games on ESPN, and they’ve recruited a few professional athletes to wear their shirts.

The Mizzen + Main website, mizzenandmain.com, sells the company’s own products as well as others they like, such as Hook + Albert dress socks, sunglasses from Canby and leather goods from Noah Marion Quality Goods. —Rachel Stone

We get it.

Welcome to the sumptuous neighborhoods of North Oak Cliff. There are no cookie-cutter houses here. (But you will find some of the city’s finest restaurants here. Conincidence?) And no one serves this area quite like we do. Tour our listings at www.davidgriffin.com, or call 214.526.5626.

What gives?

Small ways that you can make a big difference for nonprofits

Learn about the Dallas Opera … and contribute to upkeep at Turner House. The final installment of the Turner House Fall Salon Series starts at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 12. Dallas Opera general director and CEO Keith Cerny reviews “By Love Transformed,” the opera’s current season. Cerny’s presentation includes performances by Dallas Opera vocalists. Tickets cost $15 for Oak Cliff Society of Fine Arts members and $20 otherwise. The money goes toward maintenance on the 100-year-old Turner House, 401 N. Rosemont, turnerhouse.org.

Let kids choose a gift at the Cozy Cottage … and provide four meals through the North Texas Food Bank. Children often ask the boutique’s owner, Cynthia Herndon, what’s upstairs. So a few years ago, she decided to let them see. Every year, she clears out the stuff she stores up there and decorates it like a winter wonderland, where children can buy a trinket for $1 to give to a loved one. All of the dollars go to the food bank. The Cozy Cottage, 336 W. Eighth, 214.941.1110.

Know Of Ways

that neighbors can spend time, attend an event, or purchase or donate something to benefit a neighborhood nonprofit? Email your suggestion to launch@advocatemag.com.