All Photos: Alan Mercer
Assisted by Eric V. & Psymon Imagery
Hair & Make-up: Gary W. Parson
“One of the most sophisticated models in the world”
-CNN’s Elsa Klensch
“Dallas’ favorite model”
-Dallas’s Park Cities People
“Model nonpareil”
-Dallas Morning News
“The incomparable Jan Strimple”
-The Turtle Creek News
“The most professional model I’ve ever known”
-Model Agent Kim Dawson
Respected as Dallas's premiere fashion event producer, Jan Strimple's shows have rocked the runways from New York's Fashion Week to Dallas/Ft. Worth's most high profile fashion luncheons and award shows. Known for her creative theatrical productions, Jan equally relishes opportunities to showcase emerging designers in a straight forward, but edgy style. Trusted by established designers like Carolina Herrera, Lela Rose, Yeohlee, Max Azria, Bob Mackie, Rodarte and Phillip Lim to Project Runway designers Daniel Vosovic and Shirin Askari, she enjoys the partnership and challenges that each production brings.
Jan produces for corporate clients and Dallas’s most exacting non-profits including The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Salvation Army, Mary Kay, Fashion Group International, Dallas Market Center, The Dallas Symphony Orchestra League, The Fashionistas, and Equest.
Jan was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame for her AIDS fundraising efforts in 1996 and in 2001 she was honored by the Design Industry Foundation Fighting AIDS as a “Legend in the Fight Against AIDS.”
In 1999 she was nominated for the Ray Kuchling Award for outstanding contributions and support of the human rights campaign. She continued to receive kudos for her philanthropic work in 2006 when Philanthropy World Magazine honored her while recognizing socially conscious citizens in the philanthropic world.
Fashion Group International awarded Jan the Fashion Forum Career Achievement Award in 2003 and the Fashion Innovation Award in 2008. These awards recognized Jan for transcending the ordinary and raising the bar in her industry.
In 2009 'Women That Soar' honored Jan with their 'Brilliantly You' Fashion Award for empowering, supporting and inspiring other women on their personal and professional journeys.
Originally from Kent, Ohio, she relocated to San Antonio as a teenager. At six feet, Jan had been modeling since the age of 13 and she didn’t pause moving to Texas. In 1980 she made her way to Dallas where she very quickly started modeling for Leon Hall at The Dallas Apparel Mart and much more work through the Kim Dawson Agency.
After walking for Bob Mackie, Carolina Herrera, Mary McFadden, Bill Blass in her first season in New York, she went to Paris and was booked by Dior, Lanvin and Givenchy for the Haute Couture season in Paris. Her international career was born that year and it spanned the 80's and the first half of the 90's.
Jan has been married to her high school sweetheart, Dan Strimple, a PGA golf professional, for over forty years.
AM: Jan, I know you started modeling at 13. What kind of job was that?
JS: It was not very glamorous. It was a job holding rat killer. The product was in focus and I was out of focus. I’m from Kent, Ohio originally and there wasn’t a lot of high fashion work there! The third most important fashion college is in Kent now. I was amazed!
AM: As a child were you always interested in fashion?
JS: Yes, my mother tells a story of when she put me in a ruffled dress to go to kindergarten, I remember this too, well I didn’t want to wear it so I screamed and ran around the house and I would not get on the bus. I hated ruffles when I was five. I was never very girlie. I already had strong opinions about fashion.
AM: Was it not sophisticated enough for you?
JS: It just wasn’t my taste. I’ve never worn a lot of girlie things. Now I have a lot of black in my closet because it’s a good contrast color for my white skin and red hair.
AM: Did you have a suspicion you would be tall?
JS: My mother is five ten and my father is six two. There are three girls in my family and I’m the dreaded middle child. I laughingly told my father one day that I was the son he never had because I look like him and I got the unusual height. I’m just shy of six foot.
AM: Was being so tall ever uncomfortable for you?
JS: No, and you know why? It’s because my mother was in theater. We had musicians and theater people in our home constantly. My parents were entrepreneurial and owned their own business. I did not have a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 parent who came home. My mother had perfect posture and so did my father. It was required of us to live in the household to carry our self with dignity. How you carry yourself and your posture is how you’re asking people to treat you and receive you in the world.
AM: I absolutely agree with that. Your parents were ahead of their time.
JS: Very much so.
AM: Do you do anything special to keep yourself fit and upright now?
JS: I have a ballet bar and I do stay stretched, which is nice. As you age it is the most important thing. When you think about it, standing up straight and tall keeps your organs in alignment and then they work the way they are supposed to.
AM: You know a lot about all this.
JS: A model makes her living with her body so she has to have an awareness and stay in tune with her body. The combination of modeling and dance keeps me aware of myself.
AM: That really helped walking those runways I’m sure.
JS: Starting in Ohio, I never had that idea on my horizon. I knew I loved fashion but I was more interested in the business side. I have a brain and I use it. It was never about me. After moving to San Antonio in 1977 I started working at Frost Brothers, which was the Neiman Marcus of San Antonio. The man who owned the store played tennis at a tennis club where I was the buyer for the women’s clothes. One day he said I needed to come to the store so he could talk to me about working for them. The fashion director hired me immediately. I did some modeling there and then I moved to Dallas in 1980 thinking I would just list with an agency and do a little modeling work until I started working in the business side again. Neiman Marcus was here so I thought I would do something with them. Overnight I started working, but not in Dallas. I was too tall and odd looking.
AM: You were exotic and made for couture.
JS: Yes and Dallas didn’t really have that other than Neimans. The tallest girl working in Dallas was 5’10”.
AM: So how did you get your big break as a runway model?
JS: I was working a hair show in Las Vegas and I met a man who came up to me and asked, “Who are you and where do you live?” I told him my name and that I lived in Dallas. He told me he came into Dallas and produced fashion shows. He said I would be his star. His name was Leon Hall. So he put me on the runway and I would open and close his shows. He was the first to really believe in me here in Dallas, as well as Lou Lattimore, which is a fine store. In fact I was doing a floor show at Lou Lattimore and Bob Mackie came in doing his very first trunk show and at the end of the second day, he told me he didn’t know what I was doing here but that I would be going to New York to work his runway. So I walked the runways in New York and within ten days I had agencies in fourteen countries.
AM: You also have a mannequin made in your image.
JS: Yes, that is one of my biggest honors from the Rootstein Company out of London. That was truly amazing. I have the original bust that the sculpter, John Taylor made.
AM: How do you keep your ego in check with all these honors?
JS: I’m from Ohio! (much laughter) Also I went to New York when I was 27 years old and for someone with white skin that’s a girl who should already be retired. That’s when I started my international career. They had no idea how old I was. Nobody bothered to ask me.
AM: You’re timeless. There is no age.
JS: Thank you. By the time I got into that whole scenario my head was screwed on straight. Youth can still get in the way of good decisions and I may have handled things differently if I had been seventeen. I was immediately immersed with the top girls in the world.
AM: You seem like you have always been grounded.
JS: It’s the way I was raised and marrying a guy from the same small town. We have the same Midwestern values.
AM: Have you been married a long time?
JS: Forty-one years to an amazing guy.
AM: Now you are the Queen of the industry here.
JS: I do a lot of fashion production and I train the next generation of runway girls for five of the agencies here.
AM: What is the bottom line for these girls?
JS: I’ll tell you the hardest thing for them to understand. There are a lot of beautiful young women, but they don’t understand when she is 5’6” there isn’t a lot for her to do. Then they ask if she could just do cosmetics, well no. It has nothing to do with the girl. She just can’t stand next to a 5’11” beauty. She will be diminished. All she could ever do is something solo and those solo spots for diminutive people are now taken by actresses. The fashion industry will take you if you are 5’8” or taller now.
AM: Do you give the shorter girls any other advice?
JS: I encourage them to take acting classes and use their beauty in a different way. They can be in another kind of commercial, just not high fashion.
