Inside Designer Ivy Dane’s Pattern-Filled Life in Hudson

In her attic, Ivy Dane has a scrapbook. In that scrapbook’s packed pages, a succession of places she’s called home chronicles the chapters of her life in design. There’s the bungalow in the Texas Hill Country that she gut-remodeled and rebuilt over a decade. There’s the ground-floor apartment in the Village, which she dubbed “Ivy’s House of Darkness.” And then there’s the listing of the 1896 Victorian on a quiet side street in Hudson that she currently calls home. 

As if they were the glossy cardboard sheets of a children’s game—the ones with tiny vinyl figures you could peel and restick in countless arrangements—each of Dane’s scrapbooked spaces is a tangram of the furniture, patterns, heirlooms, and art she’s carried. “My old friends come in here and say ‘it’s exactly the same place,’” says Dane. “Same red-and-white striped bedroom; same Bardot portrait; same table.” 

The spacious attic—or gym/bunkhouse/office, as she likes to call it, is washed in light. A worktable is lined with plants and paperwork. Standing on the rainbow-painted floor, a giant paper doll is left over from a window display at Rebus, her children’s store on Warren Street. The attic windows look over neighboring rooftops and out to the Hudson River, where the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse is sparkling in the early spring light. 

Below, her current backsheet is a three-story, two-bedroom home with a street-facing front parlor and a back kitchen that opens onto a patio, currently bursting with bright yellow forsythia. “It’s the perfect size for me,” she explains of the house. “I like things with a history that aren’t perfect. I want things that last, but don’t want to worry about them getting nicked.”

Ivy Dane, in Miniature

Growing up in Chicago, Dane was the baby in a family with three much older siblings. “I was a very well-dressed child,” says Dane. “My mother was obsessed with making sure I was always in the perfect outfit with the perfect accessories to match.” Her status as the last-born gave her plenty of space to indulge her vivid imagination. “I loved dollhouses,” she says. “I still love miniatures, which might explain a lot when it comes to the store.”

Dane’s sister Roseanne worked in New York City’s fashion industry, and her first trips to Manhattan included visits to her sister, with some retail excursions thrown in. The city and her sister’s glamorous lifestyle left an impression, and as soon as she graduated high school, Dane headed to NYU for film school. After graduation, she landed a job coordinating pilots for HBO. She realized the world of film production—with its irregular hours and no dress code—was exactly where she belonged. 

Twenty Years in Texas

After moving to Austin for a relationship, Dane continued to grow her career, becoming a full producer of commercials, music videos, and print advertising. In her downtime, she loved the laid-back vibe of America’s Third Coast. “Austin had this ‘keep Austin weird thing,’ which I loved,” says Dane. 

Dane was so comfortable there that she and her former partner bought a 1920s bungalow. “It was a Sears Roebuck house that should have been condemned,” explains Dane. “We basically ripped everything out and reinstalled custom millwork and trim throughout.” It was an intense 10-year project that taught her plenty about design—and that she didn’t want to take that type of project on again.

When she wasn’t working or renovating, Dane was scouring second-hand markets and garage sales. “I was a flea market fanatic,” she says. “But I had rules.” Nevertheless, over the course of her two decades in Texas, she amassed an impressive collection. “I had collections galore,” she explains. “I had tablecloths from all 50 states, a gajillion cocktail shakers, vintage eyeglasses, vintage fabrics, and barkcloth from the `50s.”

When Dane decided to sell the bungalow, she realized she needed an edit. “I was moving back to New York City, and I was like, I gotta get rid of all this stuff,” she explains. So she hosted her own sale—and it was big. “People wanted to get on my mailing list,” she says, “which was funny because it was an isolated event.” She kept her favorite pieces and put them in storage, gambling that she’d find the right home for her decor. 

Patterns of Shadow and Light

Dane returned to New York for work, but also to be closer to her sister Roseanne, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “My sister was the best person on this planet,” says Dane of Roseanne, who had been a buyer on Seventh Avenue, a fashion forecaster, and then a model in her late 50s. “She was always my role model.” 

Dane settled into a garden apartment in Greenwich Village, in an 1860s building with two bathrooms and a secret closet. “There was never any direct light,” she explains. Despite the shadows, the apartment worked. “The things that I decided to keep after the sale basically fit perfectly,” she says, “which was like a miracle.” 

On weekends, Dane visited Roseanne in Rockland County, bringing watercolors and sitting with her sister. What emerged from those sessions were 49 small watercolor plaids, some like textile prints, some like building facades, a few more smudged into abstraction. “I call them the Parkinson’s plaids,” Dane explains. “My sister was born on 4/9/49, so there are 49 of them.” She now keeps them arranged in her foyer. 

First Time’s the Charm

The first time Dane came to Hudson, she wasn’t particularly dazzled. “I’m probably the only person on the planet who came here and wasn’t really that impressed the first time,” she says. She had moved from her Village apartment and was considering leaving the city when an old friend invited her to visit. “The train comes here, and it’s a historic town,” she says. “But, I was like, ‘whatever.’” Still, she was intrigued and found herself searching Zillow. “I figured it wouldn’t be a bad place to plant some seeds.”

The first house she found, an 1896 Victorian, was a short walk from the train with north-western views. “It really appealed because it had all the things that I love in an old house,” she recalls. “The trim, the wood floors, the windows, the great light.” To understand her options, she hired a broker and toured homes across town, but nothing stuck. She kept returning to the Victorian. “I loved the house,” she says. “And it was in great shape. So I wouldn’t have to do much.” In 2019, it was hers. 

Keep Hudson Weird

Hudson was Dane’s part-time home until the pandemic. She found herself locked down in the Victorian, getting to know her neighbors over the fence and discovering the community’s texture. She loved what she found. “There are so many creative people here,” she says. “I encounter so many people that have similar backgrounds—advertising people, copywriters, art directors, designers are like a dime a dozen in this town. It reminded me of old Austin. This place is full of freaks.”

Dane also noticed something else. “When production work slowed down, I started working at a shop here on Warren Street and really enjoyed it,” she says. “Hudson’s children’s apparel shop closed around the time of the pandemic.” But there were children everywhere—Covid babies and new families—all of them needing clothes. She’d always wanted her own shop, and her very first retail job had been at a children’s store. “I love little things,” she says. “And I love the little people.”

She opened her shop, Rebus, in December 2023, stocking globally sourced clothing and accessories for kids under size 10. “It’s provisions for children,” Dane explains. Since then, Rebus has become a clothing boutique that families rely on, and Dane has become a connector in the community she wandered into on a whim. While networking with kid-focused bloggers, consulting with parents and principals, and supporting the local Mad Hatter parade, she’s watched Hudson’s kids grow up. “It’s so cool,” she says. “I love Hudson, and now I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”  

This article appears in May 2026.