At 24 years old, SMU law grad Alana C. Matthews knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She just didn’t know how to make it happen. So, on a Friday night after a long week of work at a litigation firm, she googled that off-the-partner-track goal: “How to become the GM of a hockey team.”
Canada-born and Pennsylvania-bred, Matthews played club hockey all the way through college, and she had already been networking, asking for informative coffees with Dallas Stars execs, when her search results offered up an interesting book title: Behind the Moves: NHL General Managers Tell How Winners Are Built. She bought the coffee-table tome, despite its $200-something price tag and her student loans. The seller sent a message inviting Matthews to pick up the book instead of having it shipped, as her address was only a mile away. When she arrived at the door, she was surprised to find herself face-to-face with the book’s author, Jason Farris, COO of the Dallas Stars. She was hired as the team’s in-house counsel less than a year later, in 2014.
Four years after joining the team, Matthews was promoted to head of business operations, an upward move that set several records, making her not only one of the first female executives with the Stars but also, at 27 years old, the youngest executive in any major sports team. She would also become the first mom in the C-suite; at the time of Matthews’ promotion, she was seven months pregnant.
At 27 years old, she became the youngest executive in any major sports team.
A new inspiration began to take shape after her baby was born. “I was just so impacted by becoming a mother and just full of creativity and full of urgency,” Matthews says. “Like, what am I doing with my life? Is this fulfilling? Am I going after my dreams? You know, wanting that sense of self.” Contributing to her surge in purpose was the sudden loss she had suffered a few years earlier, when her mother died of a brain aneurysm.
Matthews gained an appreciation for quality clothing from her mom, who once ran her own kids apparel line; she still has the Ralph Lauren navy blazer her mom bought her when she was 13 years old. Later, in the pro sports world, she earned a reputation for dressing to the nines, usually donning a power suit in accordance with her “look good, feel good” philosophy. But, feeling uncomfortable with her postpartum body, Matthews began noticing the custom-tailored sartorial perks enjoyed by her male counterparts.
“I was more aware of the way I was dressing and was thinking about women’s bodies and how much women are not really catered to in the suiting workwear world,” Matthews says. “How do you dress as a woman in an environment that’s mostly men? You’re constantly critiqued and judged.”
Just as brazenly as she pursued her pro-hockey dream, Matthews threw herself into workwear research. When she was pregnant with her third boy, in 2022, she left the Stars and officially launched Alautus, making versatility and options for customization, from buttons to monograms, the keys to her designs. Notable for the kid-wrangling set: the Chelsea blazer and sheath dress are both machine washable.
“My own personal mission is to make women realize that you can build your life on your terms,” Matthews says. “From my time in pro sports, I’ve seen so many brilliant women who are kind of like, ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I shouldn’t do that’ or ‘What are my options?’ and I’m like, ‘No, don’t accept what they’re giving you. You say what you want.’ ”
This story originally appeared in the July issue of D Magazine with the headline “On a Power Play.” Write to holland@dmagazine.com.
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