Chic shapeware in Vogue. Cozy flannel pajamas in Oprah Daily. Luxe sleepwear in Forbes. It’s intimate apparel showcased in the most elite media brands; pictures and headlines that catch the eye and beg to be explored. That’s the point.
Readers (or surfers and scrollers in the digital world) will spend time ogling the product and not thinking about the behind-the-scenes hustle it took to push it into the spotlight. That’s also the point. And that hustle, by the way, has a name. It’s Heather Patt DeBoer.
DeBoer is the founder and owner of Heather Patt Public Relations. She’s an army of (mostly) one, going to bat for her roster of clients, all of whom are jockeying for attention in an ever-changing and increasingly competitive media landscape. She works primarily out of her Lehigh Valley residence, although it’s not unusual in her line of work to spend an afternoon or even a few days in a different ZIP code. One of her most frequented destinations is New York City, her onetime—and perhaps future—home.
DeBoer grew up in the Salisbury Township area. She has been drawn to fashion ever since she was a little girl, a spark ignited by her grandmother Betty Patt, whom DeBoer recalls as a woman of impeccable sartorial tastes. The two frequented Allentown’s Hess’s department store, when models sporting the latest styles would strut around the legendary Patio restaurant. And it was her grandmother who gifted DeBoer her first subscription to Women’s Wear Daily, the publication long regarded as the bible of fashion to those in the know.
But, even though DeBoer knew where her interests lied, she wasn’t quite sure how to channel them into a career. “I knew I couldn’t be a designer,” she says. “I am not artistically inclined by any means. I just wanted to get my foot in the door somewhere and then figure out the rest from there.”
Following her graduation from Salisbury High School, she moved on to Penn State, where she more or less crafted her own fashion marketing major, studying business and marketing, and enrolling in fashion-adjacent classes like costume design. Soon after graduation in 1996, following a brief stint in the family real estate business (it wasn’t for her), the Big Apple beckoned. A friend helped her land a job as a sales associate—with a little bit of public relations sprinkled in—at the women’s apparel company Craig Taylor. “I worked in a beautiful showroom over by the High Line,” DeBoer says.
She was making connections, which led her to a new opportunity in 2002 with Tracy Paul & Company, the now well-established public relations firm. “I got in at the ground floor, and then we started to get more and more business,” DeBoer says. “And I worked my way up to become the managing director.”
She was overseeing offices in New York and Los Angeles, but there were tradeoffs, too—namely, her free time. “It’s a high-paced industry,” DeBoer says. “I’d get to work at 7:30 [a.m.] and then we’d do our stuff, but then we’d have events at night, so I’d get home at 11:30 [p.m.]. It was really intense. People are like, ‘Oh, fashion, that’s so fun.’ And it’s like, yeah, but, it’s long nights, that’s for sure.”
By 2009, DeBoer and Paul decided to part ways, and DeBoer was ready to strike out on her own.
“I reached out to my two clients to tell them I had left, and they said, ‘As soon as our contracts are over, we’re going to sign with you.’ And that’s kind of how it started.” Those clients—Le Mystere and Felina, the first two official clients of Heather Patt Public Relations—are still with her today.
Although some of the brands in her portfolio do offer accessories and loungewear, her primary focus was, and continues to be, intimate apparel: bras, underwear, sleepwear, shapewear and the like. “That’s kind of been my bread and butter,” DeBoer says. “I didn’t want it at first, and then I was like, ‘You know what? I should embrace this, because there’s not many people that know about the industry.’”
In the marketing world, there is earned media (attention earned organically) and paid media (advertisements that come at a cost). The ways public relations firms pursue both have changed a great deal since DeBoer was thumbing through her first Women’s Wear Daily. The most obvious change is the continuing shift to digital, with many media companies scrapping traditional printed publications or even folding completely. “I still do earned media, but it’s challenging because there aren’t as many outlets,” DeBoer says. “I’ve had to shift my strategy quite a few times.” Figuring out how to leverage social media, along with its countless TikTok-famous celebrities and influencers, also presented a new frontier.
When asked if the PR business is more stressful now than it used to be, DeBoer doesn’t hesitate in her answer: “Yes. One thousand percent.” She adds, “You can’t get lazy, because there’s a lot of PR agencies out there, and someone can easily take your business. It’s very cutthroat.” She’s constantly scouring content and stories, looking to see if her clients were mentioned. “If my brand is not in there, I’ll introduce myself to the editor, send them my client list, and say, ‘I’d love to send you stuff.’ I’m constantly trying to make new relationships.”
The payoff is the big placement, and DeBoer has had many. A few Christmases ago, Eva Chen, author and vice president of fashion and shopping partnerships for Instagram, put out an SOS on social media. She was looking for sleepwear akin to the classic flannel Peter Pan-style nightgown she had worn as a girl. DeBoer was happy to oblige with products from her client, Lanz of Salzburg. Chen, who has 2.5 million followers on Instagram, later posted a family picture of her crew in the matching plaid getups. DeBoer and her client were thrilled.
There are many more successes: multiple shoutouts for Le Mystere from Oprah Winfrey and her media empire; AO Eyewear aviator sunglasses worn by Tom Cruise getting lots of love in GQ magazine; funky floral Room Service PJs in People magazine; regular placements in TODAY show shopping segments. The list goes on and on.
While DeBoer handles all aspects of running her own company—and it’s a lot—she does work regularly with a network of freelancers—all women—on both the East Coast and West Coast. “I can call any of these women at any time to work with me on a brand or a special project, and I can be confident that I will be in good hands,” DeBoer says.
Off the clock (as if there’s such a thing in PR!) DeBoer keeps it low-key. She is married to Derek DeBoer, a customer care representative in oil, gas and chemical for Victaulic. They have two daughters: Cleo, 14, and Gemma, 11.
Funnily enough, Hess’s department store, which figured prominently in DeBoer’s introduction to fashion, also played a role in the introduction to her future spouse. Derek and his family moved to the Lehigh Valley from California so his father, Jerry DeBoer, could take a job as senior vice president of men’s and women’s apparel at Hess’s.
Derek and Heather met when they were teenagers and dated for a bit but went their separate ways. They reconnected some 15 years later and eventually began a life together in New York City: marriage, kids. They moved back to the Lehigh Valley 10 years ago to raise their daughters here. And, while DeBoer say there’s a lot to like about the Valley, she and her husband haven’t ruled out a return to the Big Apple someday. “We take the girls often so they can know the city,” DeBoer says. “But the Lehigh Valley is great. My family’s still here. We have a lot of friends. It’s a great place to raise kids.”
Published as “Insight” in the May 2025 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
