Fashion 88 : Owning Their Own Shops Fills a Void
When Amy Bailey was a Brentwood teen-ager, she would drag her mother “all over Southern California to buy bathing suits. I wanted things that were different, skimpier.”
Nine years ago, Bailey and her mother, Susan Thomas, put an end to their long treks; they opened Canyon Beachwear and filled it with the kind of suits Bailey had always wanted.
Located less than a block from the beach in Santa Monica, the tiny pink-stucco store is generally swamped with females. By noon on a recent Friday, 20 women had already been there. Each one had gone out the Dutch door with swimsuits, some with three, according to 27-year-old Bailey, the boutique’s sole owner since her mother’s death last May.
A customer normally slips into 10 suits and spends half an hour in the process. “But there are people who will take three hours,” Bailey says. “They’re the ones who try on too much, get confused and have to go home to think it over.
“I don’t mind,” she adds.
Her only objection is “customers who are rude and don’t give any feedback.” That morning, she had gotten plenty of feedback, especially from two pregnant women who explained exactly what they wanted.
There are no maternity styles per se in the store, but “there are things that will work,” Bailey says. Also missing from the inventory are “suits with really low-cut legs or built-in bras. I just don’t have that customer.”
Included in the inventory are a number of small, local manufacturers Bailey and her mother “discovered” along with bigger names like Liza Bruce, Anne Cole, Body Glove, Raisins and Why Things Burn.
Her customers are teen-agers and women between 20 and 40, willing to spend anywhere from $40 to $130 per suit. There are also celebrities, such as Brigitte Nielsen and Goldie Hawn.
People who prefer to buy their swimsuits in privacy can make appointments to shop after hours, and women who want a custom-made bikini can order it. The supplier is Beach Bee, a Hermosa Beach company (owned by a family friend) that makes the store’s mix-and-match bikini pieces.
Bailey recommends shopping alone.
“A lot of times, someone comes in with a girlfriend. The girlfriend gets jealous and discourages her from buying the suit. Then she comes back the next day and gets it for herself.”
Sports Illustrated’s special swimwear issue isn’t much of a friend either, according to Bailey.
“Six or seven years ago, our customers would buy everything in the magazine,” she says. “The last issues haven’t gotten any response--maybe two or three phone calls.” Her customers snub the suits because they are either too covered-up or too bare.
A husband or a boyfriend can be the worst shopping companion of all. Because the store is so small (400 square feet of selling space), “he’ll feel uncomfortable. Then she’ll feel uncomfortable and they’ll leave.
“But she’ll come back alone,” a smiling Bailey says.
Canyon Beachwear, 106 Entrada Drive, Santa Monica.
Shauna Stein
When Shauna Stein was a teen-ager in Salt Lake City, she longed to have “matching Villager outfits.” A number of years later, in Florence, Italy, she would press her nose against the windows of the finest stores and long for what she saw.
In both cases, she got the clothes by planning and saving. Now Stein passes the lesson on to customers in the posh Beverly Center store bearing her name.
“It’s what European women do. They buy better and buy less,” says Stein, her cherubic face radiant beneath a straw bowler. When she stopped wearing earrings, she started wearing hats, she explains. The idea is popular with her sales staff, and all around the store hats bob up and down, the finishing touch to elaborate outfits that cost a small fortune.
Within 5,000 square feet, there is the occasional $20 lace-trimmed T-shirt, but the bulk of the merchandise climbs in price from $100 cotton-jersey, private-label separates (manufactured by husband Marty Stein) to $350 Italian linen blazers and up to $2,000 silk-tafetta dresses from England.
Stein prides herself on having an eye for undiscovered foreign talent. She claims to be the first to bring Milan’s Romeo Gigli to Southern California (while she was buying for a specialty store in the Valley).
Now, in her year-old store, she carries Gigli and other stellar designers along with “a lot of no-name, new people,” all of them Italian or English and all, she says, “people you pick up and drop. You don’t want to build them up, you want to build a concept.”
She advocates building a wardrobe on one expensive item, preferably a well-cut, basic jacket. According to her theory: “A lot of women buy something every week. By the end of the month, they might have spent $500, and they still don’t have anything they feel great in. We show people how to plan their buying.”
The store attracts clients such as the Pointer Sisters--or the two women who drive in from the Valley every Friday to spend perhaps “$500 to $2,000 apiece,” Stein says.
It also draws customers who remind Stein of her past. They buy a pair of $10 socks or merchandise on sale.
“I appreciate them,” she says. “I remember what it was like to want the best, to die to own a matching Villager shirt and skirt. Then I would wear them every day, because they made me feel so good.”
Shauna Stein, Beverly Center, 6th Floor.
