Carla Rockmore has 1.3 million followers on TikTok and her own fashion line, but there was a time when she was just another carpool mom in North Dallas, wondering what happened to her dreams. “It was challenging,” she says. “The guard at school would tell me I couldn’t idle the car in line while waiting to pick up my kids. What are you talking about? It’s 110 degrees!”
A Montreal native, Rockmore enjoyed a globe-trotting early career, leaving fashion school in Toronto for a couture house in Amsterdam. After returning to Canada, she toggled between corporate and boutique gigs, but motherhood meant slowing down. In 2012, her family moved to Dallas so her husband, Michael Stitt, could become CEO of the menswear brand Haggar Clothing, but Rockmore struggled to find industry work in Texas.
Fashion is about transformation, though, and Rockmore underwent a dramatic one. In March 2020, she was in India working to launch her own jewelry line when the pandemic hit, and she had to come home. Frustrated and looking for escape under quarantine, she started making videos in her closet, part practical stylist advice, part creative riff. She was a natural on camera, with her dark spiraling hair and outsize personality, trying on outfits that ranged from classy to wacky. “It was a convergence of my education and talent, my need to be in front of a stage and a void in the market,” she says. She became a social media phenomenon.
Architectural Digest has featured the closet in her Preston Hollow home, a two-story Narnia of color, spangle and swish so expansive it includes a spiral staircase and fireplace. But the real lure of her videos is a 50-something woman taking delight in the art of dressing up. “Our media don’t show us so many examples of women this age who know who they are and clearly like it,” New York Times Magazine said about Rockmore.
Now 58, Rockmore has a line of clothes on her website as well as through QVC. Many of her videos these days feature Ivy, the 21-year-old daughter whose gender transition became part of the tale, bringing new meaning to Rockmore’s TikTok slogan of self-expression through fashion. (Her 24-year-old son, Eli, helps behind the scenes.) I spoke with Rockmore over the phone, where she was as charming as she is in her videos.
“Fashion matters, because it’s a declaration of how you’re feeling without words,” says Carla Rockmore, who has a clothing line on QVC and her own website. Stewart Cohen
This is a first for me. In researching the clothes on your website, I actually bought the wrap shirt dress in marigold. I haven’t even started this interview, and I’m already out $55.
Ooh, you did? I love it! That dress is sort of the ethos of my design, where clothing is your canvas, and jewelry and accessories are your paint. You can dress it up however you want. I think color is one of my fortes, because my mom was a painter. Proportion, color and shape were dinner conversation.
I’m not much of a trend person. I’m more like, “I love it, now I’m going to wear versions of it for the rest of my life.”
How do you describe Dallas to people who have never been here?
Dallas is a strange juxtaposition. On the good side, you have some of the nicest people in the world. Being a Northeastern girl, I was completely floored when I moved to a place where people strike up conversations in line at the coffee shop. I kept looking over my shoulder thinking, What’s happening? What’s the ulterior motive? But it never came. They’re just genuinely nice.
The downside is that every strip mall looks exactly the same. I once got lost driving around a strip mall in Plano because I thought I was in Preston Hollow. Same Chico’s, same Starbucks. And everyone drives everywhere. I once tried to walk a single block, from Elements on Lovers near the Tollway to my chiropractor across the street, and while I was walking along the underpass, a woman pulled over and asked, “Are you OK, dear?” I said, “I’m just walking,” and she looked at me like I’d completely lost my mind.
How do you describe Dallas fashion?
Hidden. There’s incredible fashion here, but it doesn’t announce itself. It’s not going to smack you in the face, and I think that’s because Dallas isn’t a walking city. I’m always floored when I go to Forty Five Ten or to the downtown Neiman’s. Fashion here is a destination. You have to go to the restaurant, the party, the bar, and when you do — you will see it.
And no matter where I am, I could be going to the doctor for a physical, if I’m wearing a great pair of shoes, another woman will inevitably stop me and say, “Those shoes! Where did you get them?” That’s a kind of sisterhood. In New York, nobody ever asks about your shoes.
You went viral for putting outfits together, something others might find frivolous. Can you make the pitch that fashion matters?
Fashion matters, because it’s a declaration of how you’re feeling without words. It’s also a barometer of what’s going on in the world. I find fashion history so fascinating, why certain pieces of clothing were adopted at certain times.
In the 1910s, hobble skirts restricted women’s movement so completely that in cities like New York and Vancouver, they lowered the streetcars to allow women to get in and out. By mid-century, the story had flipped: Cars and fenders echoed the streamlined silhouette of the pencil skirt popularized by Christian Dior. From hoop skirts to hobble hems to pencil skirts, fashion has always shaped how we move, what we build and how the world makes room for us.
The closet gets used as a metaphor for repression, staying “in the closet,” but your closet has been an engine of self-discovery. Eventually, this became true in your own family, too. Can you talk about how Ivy started joining you in the videos?
Ivy was there from the beginning, because I was doing 10-minute videos on YouTube for my girlfriends up in Canada. I had 91 followers, and I was happy about that! The only reason I blew up was because Ivy said, let’s take it down to a minute and put this on TikTok.
Then Ivy came to me crying one day. Actually, we were in the closet. She said, “I don’t think I’m gay. I think I’m trans.” I felt so bad for her, because she said, “I’m so tired of coming out, Mom. I’m so tired of not being who I am.” At that point, I still naively thought it was a choice, and I was so afraid she was choosing a harder path. But I quickly decided, we’re going to support, full-force. About a week later, she and I did our first video together, because I wanted her to feel not only accepted by her family but also pretty, feminine — all those qualities she’d been craving for the first 17 years of her life. I wanted her to catch up to herself.
I thought, I don’t know if there are a lot of other parents in this situation, but maybe the benefit of my platform is we can show a “normal” family — then again, what’s normal? — modeling what it’s like to accept your child no matter who they are. Sometimes I feel like that’s the whole reason I went viral. Not for my fashion, not for my self-expression. For hers.
The glitz. The glam. The parties. The trips. The allure of high fashion bedazzled with a life of luxury. As with much of the filter-polished nature of social media, all is not as it appears.
For Shaun Balkum, he was living a dream as a high-fashion model with ties to New York and as one of Dallas’ most recognizable faces. The statuesque king of pose was living the high life — or so it seemed. Gracing the runways and booked for Dallas’ marquee fashion shows like DIFFA, Balkum appeared to have it all. Behind closed doors, though, was a past riddled with pain, trauma, suicide ideation and repeated bouts with homelessness. With nowhere to turn and little help, he internalized in the dark, not knowing that many of his peers were also struggling in the same deafening silence.
“Being in the industry for about 15 years now, I’ve been through a lot,” the 34-year-old father of two tells the Observer. “Working in New York at a young age and seeing so many people going down different, dark paths, and the industry just eating them up, was eye-opening for me. A lot of people on the outside will wonder ‘why is this actor on drugs’ or ‘why is there so much suicide within these careers?’ What they don’t realize are the things that these individuals put themselves through. They don’t express or talk about it because they feel like they’re going to be judged at the end of the day by their peers and family.”
With the dominance of a digital-first culture, creatives today face unprecedented pressure, from constant content demands, online comparison, scrutiny, burnout and isolation. According to a recent study conducted by Creators for Mental Health, an organization that aims to provide resources to digital creators, approximately 1 out of 10 creators say that they’ve experienced suicidal thoughts, with nearly 2 out of 3 creators admitting to mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression. Higher incidence rates rank even more among tenured creators.
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), suicide continues to be one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. The rate observed among influencers is nearly double the NIH’s reported national average.
And, as online content creation has become an increasingly lucrative path, market oversaturation has fueled added stressors of competition and gig instability.
“There’s an influx of constant competition,” says Jessica Serna, a veteran influencer behind My Curly Adventures. “People don’t realize that it’s not enough just to take good pictures and videos. A lot of times there’s way more going on [behind the scenes] so that you can stand out amongst 100,000 other influencers and creators. I think that’s where the burnout comes – it’s the pressure to stay above in such a competitive field.”
In videos captured across the country, the Dallas-based Serna is all smiles and full of vibrancy as she and her husband traverse turquoise Caribbean waters and dive deep into the ocean blue. Posting daily, she has amassed an audience of over 300,000 Instagram followers sourcing tips on travel, lifestyle and food. Over on TikTok, her reach extends even further with 571,000 followers.
While Serna admits that all that glitters can be gold in the influencer lifestyle, there can also be a dullness when creators face the not-so-glamorous business side of being a creative in order to stand out among a sea of others.
“This has been the most stressful job I’ve ever [had],” Serna says. “I go to sleep thinking about things. I wake up and there’s the pressure of… so many businesses that don’t value your time, or wait two weeks to issue you a paycheck, and then want something the next day, only to ghost you again for another three weeks. Or, a paycheck that you were supposed to get three months ago is now taking its time because it got caught up in something corporate.”
Late paychecks and the pressure to be perfect are only the tip of the iceberg of what creatives experience.
In a recent Youtube confessional titled “being a full time influencer ruined my life,” Dallas creator Ashley Devonna candidly detailed what life was really like for her behind the filters, hashtags and sponsorships. After a 4-year hiatus to recover, the Texas Woman’s University graduate is back, but now on her own terms. Many others are still stuck in the cycle.
Balkum cites a lack of community and safe spaces for honest reflection, as well as a shortage of affordable mental health resources, as inspiring him to launch his House of Balkum Foundation, a 501(c)(3) initiative stemming from the inadequacies of the fashion industry, and now offering emergency relief assistance, emotional support, community gatherings and mental health and wellness resources. His upcoming event, Saving the Creatives —dubbed the “church for creatives” — will feature an all-star panel of Dallas’ top talent including Celebrity Stylist KJ Moody, Actor and Model Kamen Casey, Photographer Jamie House and others, to discuss the challenges suffocating the industry, but also to provide solutions and support.
“We’re all intertwined in a way, and we all need each other,” Balkum says. “You know, the models need the photographers, and the photographers need the makeup artists, and the makeup artists need the models. At the end of the day, I want creatives to understand that they finally have somebody here for them, and that’s looking after them. For all of the creatives that have felt alone, that have struggled in silence – we hear you. You can talk to us and we’ll provide whatever help that we can for you.”
Dallas startup RM11 is on a similar mission. The creator-first platform was founded by Natasha August and boasts numerous perks that allow creators to own their relationships with their followers, receive fair monetization and build a sustainable business – and, hopefully, a less stressful one.
“Creators are entrepreneurs in every sense of the word,” August says. “They’re building brands, communities, revenue streams and entire businesses around their voice and audience. The more I learned about the creator economy, the more I realized how underserved creators really are. They’re expected to be talent, a marketer, customer support, content strategist, community manager and business owner all at once. I saw an opportunity to build something that gave creators more control, better tools and a more supportive way to monetize directly from their audience.”
Recently, RM11 strategically partnered with both Revive Health Therapy and Creators 4 Mental Health – a major step in its mission to support creator well-being, reduce burnout and build a healthier creator ecosystem through its CreatorCare approach. RM11 creators have access to licensed mental health professionals who specialize in creator-specific stressors, as well as affordable, flexible therapy options, community support and wellness tools to help manage burnout and emotional fatigue.
“One of the biggest misconceptions that the general public has is that creating content is easy or not a ‘real job.’ In reality, creators are running small businesses, often by themselves, while also putting their personality, image and personal life in front of the public,” August says. “There’s also a misconception that if someone has followers or makes money online, they must be confident, happy or unaffected by negative comments and pressure. But creators can experience burnout, isolation, anxiety and emotional exhaustion just like anyone else, sometimes even more intensely because their work is so personal and public.”
According to a 2026 study with data from Social Blade, Texas ranks fourth among the nation’s largest hubs for online influencers, accounting for roughly 8% of the most-followed creators. The state is also home to 1 out of 10 creators ranked in the top 500 of the creator ecosystem. If you want to make it to the top of the creator economy, Dallas is where you come. Therefore, Dallas-based businesses like House of Balkum and RM11 are not only essential but necessary with growing demand.
“Being an influencer is easy, but when something’s easy, and you actually want to be successful in it, that’s when it gets harder than people even realize. I’m extremely grateful for it though,” Serna says. “It’s so funny how something can be so simultaneously amazing and so draining at the same time.”
Saving the Creatives will be hosted by The House of Balkum on Sunday, July 12, at 6:00 p.m. at Four Day Weekend, 5601 Sears Street. Tickets are available for $35.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, help is available. You can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or chat via 988lifeline.org for free, confidential support 24/7.
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Two companies tied to a Dallas investor filed a federal lawsuit to lift a moratorium in an ongoing East Texas water dispute, alleging a groundwater district has illegally blocked their efforts to extract water from beneath land they own.
This is the latest legal action taken in a growing battle over groundwater resources in East Texas.
Kyle Bass, a venture capitalist and owner of Redtown Ranch Holdings LLC and Pine Bliss LLC, is seeking to end a moratorium on large-scale water extraction projects imposed by the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District. The lawsuit, filed through Redtown Ranch and Pine Bliss, argues that the conservation district violated the constitutional rights of Bass and his companies by denying access to water beneath the land and also seeks an undisclosed amount of compensation.
Redtown Ranch and Pine Bliss, both funded by Bass’ private equity firm Conservation Equity Management, filed permits with the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District to drill 43 water wells across two counties that, when fully operational, could extract billions of gallons of water from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer.
“What we’re trying to do here is just prevent the district from weaponizing its regulatory power to strip my clients of their property rights,” said Mollie Mallory, an attorney with Tillotson Patton, the law firm representing Redtown Ranch and Pine Bliss LLC. “The whole purpose here is just to hold them accountable and to get them to follow their own rules.”
Bass said he hasn’t been treated fairly by the district despite following its rules for years. He said the roadblocks enacted by the district, such as the moratorium, prevented his company from testing the groundwater beneath land he owns.
“This is bigger than just what happened to me,” Bass wrote in a statement to The Texas Tribune. “My lawsuit is about protecting the property rights of all Texas landowners and making clear that government regulators cannot simply change the rules to pick winners and losers.”
The groundwater district had not been served with the new lawsuit as of Wednesday afternoon, said Holli Pryor-Baze of Skelton Slusher Barnhill Watkins Wells PLLC, the attorney representing the groundwater district.
“We certainly disagree with the allegations, but are not prepared to say more than that,” she said.
A board meeting for the district will be held next week, at which time Pryor-Baze said she hoped to have been served and given time to think through the lawsuit.
The lawsuit follows a yearslong battle over groundwater access that reached a fevered pitch during the second special session of the 2025 legislative session in August. State lawmakers at the time tried and failed to set a statewide moratorium on projects of this magnitude until the state could study its aquifers to determine how much water is available and how quickly the groundwater supply replenishes.
It all began when Conservation Equity Management purchased thousands of acres in Houston, Anderson and Henderson counties with the intent to drill 43 high-capacity water wells. The latter two counties are represented by a groundwater conservation district that gave initial approvals for the project to move forward because the applications were administratively complete, a legal term meaning they were filled out properly.
The project drew the ire of East Texans, who were already angry at a number of Dallas-area organizations seeking to extract water from the region. But poultry producer Wayne-Sanderson Farms LLC, which has operations in East Texas, sued to stop the project, claiming that the wells would drain the area of its main water source and impact its operations. Wayne-Sanderson Farms uses water from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer for its processing plants and feed mills.
A district judge approved a settlement between the groundwater conservation district and Sanderson Farms and barred the district from approving certain applications until the aquifer could be studied. It also voided the original decision that the applications were administratively complete.
Then, on May 21, 2026, the district adopted a resolution calling for a moratorium on any “new non-exempt groundwater permit applications.” This moratorium prevents the district from taking action on applications for projects that don’t provide water for local use, such as for households, agriculture or local businesses.
The moratorium will end in October or when the district finishes reviewing and updating its rules — whichever is later. The district is in the process of doing so right now, Pryor-Baze said.
Conservation Equity Management sued to vacate the judge’s moratorium, then filed the latest lawsuit to stop the district’s moratorium in federal court in Tyler on July 7.
The goal is to allow Pine Bliss and Redtown Ranch to finish the administrative process as laid out in the district’s bylaws. This would include going through the State Office of Administrative Hearings before beginning operations.
“We would just continue down that road with the hope that we eventually get to do exploratory drilling to see what water is on their land,” Mallory said.
(Editor’s Note: As part of the preparation for training camp, this series will introduce 25 players who are new to the Cowboys’ roster, rookies and veterans alike. We’ll continue with outside linebacker Tyrus Wheat.)
The 2026 season will mark a homecoming for Wheat, who is now back in Dallas for his second stint with the Cowboys. As an undrafted free agent out of Mississippi State, Wheat signed with the Cowboys in 2023 on the practice squad before quickly being signed to the active roster a few months afterwards.
In his rookie season, Wheat saw a majority of his snaps come on special teams with 197, and only 31 snaps on defense. That would flip in his second season, with 165 snaps on defense and 46 on special teams. Through two years, Wheat played in 20 games and tallied 18 tackles and half a sack before spending a year with the Lions in 2025.
As is true across all levels of football, you can never have enough pass rushers. Wheat gives the Cowboys another pass rusher, who has the added ability to be able to help out on special teams as well as a blocker on kickoffs.
As for how much he’ll be in the defensive rotation, that’ll have to be something he earns in training camp. The Cowboys have some younger pass rushers ahead of him now like Donovan Ezeiruaku and first-round pick Malachi Lawrence, so there’ll need to be some proving done. That said, Wheat is also coming off his best year yet with the Lions. Will it be enough to find a role in the pass rush rotation? Oxnard will give us a good idea of that.
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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges
