Services Slated Friday for Bess Sabel, Owner of Beachwear Store

Funeral services will be held Friday for Bess Sabel, a longtime Newport Beach clothing store owner who sold one of the first yellow polka dot bikinis in Orange County when a silly song made them the rage in the late 1950s.

Mrs. Sabel, known to friends as simply “Sabel,” died Monday after a brief illness. She was 87.

Born in Negaunee, Mich., on July 4, 1899, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Mrs. Sabel attended Northwestern University. She headed to Newport Beach in the late 1940s and opened one of the first beachwear stores, said Shirley Hoff, a close family friend.

“Sabel’s beachwear was well known to everyone,” the friend said. Sabel owned the store until a few years ago, she said.

“She walked on the beach every day,” Hoff said. “She taught us all to walk. She said, ‘You don’t have to run, just walk every day.’ I think that was her secret to living so long.

“She also did for others. That was another secret. She said you could always make the chicken go for one more,” Hoff said.

Mrs. Sabel was a founding member of Temple Sharon in Costa Mesa and a member of the Business and Professional Women of Newport Beach, Hoff said. For many years she was a volunteer at Fairview Developmental Center.

Services will be conducted by Rabbi Garson Goodman at 1 p.m. Friday at Pacific View Memorial Park and Mortuary, 3500 Pacific View Drive, Newport Beach.

Mrs. Sabel’s husband, Harold, died in 1978. The couple had no children, Hoff said.