The Founding Myth · Dallas, 1973
A Woman.
A Pillow.
An Industry.
There are founding stories, and then there are founding myths. The story of Peacock Alley belongs to the second kind.
Some stories start with ambition.
Others begin more quietly.
In 1973, a woman named Mary Ella Gabler sewed a boudoir pillow at her kitchen table in Dallas, Texas. She had no factory, no investors, no plan. What she had was an obsession with beautiful textiles — inherited from a childhood spent in Pennsylvania Dutch country, surrounded by heirloom quilts stitched by hands that knew something about patience and permanence.