Inside Dallas Designer Nicole Musselman’s Historic Bungalow Turned Sunny Boutique in Uptown

To me, it’s just happy. It’s joyful,” says Nicole Musselman of Koch, the clothing line she launched seven years ago. This sunshiny sentiment informs not only Koch’s block-printed T-shirts and flirty smocked skorts (easily identifiable among the Park Cities set as “The Erica”) but every square inch of the designer’s light-filled boutique on Fairmount Street.

Musselman relocated the brand from its former Dallas Design Center space to this historic 1920s bungalow and enlisted interior designer Jean Liu for the interiors. A few months later, Veranda listed it as one of the 10 most beautiful boutiques in the country. We couldn’t agree more.

Inside, an electric-blue neon sign boldly welcomes guests to The Koch House. Another wall features a framed life jacket in shocking pink — an art piece by James Gilbert that Musselman bought years ago during his Dallas Contemporary exhibition. A green outdoor space is home to a well-used Ping-Pong table and a set of cornhole boards — and leads the way to a photography studio where the team shoots product for the website, a major driver of the brand’s rapidly growing business. (Everything in the collection is manufactured in Dallas except for sweaters, which are made in Los Angeles.) Trinkets by local jewelry designer Madison McKinley and a bar cart with Casamigos are all perfectly peppered throughout the space.

Also housed inside the boutique are the Koch team’s offices and conference room. A white board sits on an easel, filled with brainstorming notes and dates of upcoming collaborations. One whiteboard is labeled “Joy Makers,” while the other is dubbed “Risk Takers.” The boards are used mindfully: Every month, each team member writes something they are grateful for on the first board and something they would do if they knew they wouldn’t fail on the second.

“It’s important to develop a comfort level with pushing yourself, setting goals really high, and being happy with failing — and learning from that,” Musselman says. “And just being able to identify what it is that makes you happy.”

These concepts are at the core of Musselman’s brand.