Lounge Wizard
Make a trip to the Ladies Lounge and you’ll feel as though you’ve stepped into a teenage girl’s bedroom from the ‘50s--stuff is strewn everywhere.
The Costa Mesa store is also more boudoir than boutique, with its pink velvet easy chair occupied by a stuffed Cheshire cat, lime-colored couch, chandelier with dangling plastic cartoon characters, assorted bowling balls and vinyl bowling bags, dome-style hair dryer, pink Princess phone, old trophies, jewelry boxes filled with pastel nail polishes, Barbie dolls, Barbie furniture and other curiosities too numerous to catalog.
Ladies Lounge sells new and used women’s clothing, but spend any time here and it soon becomes obvious that many people come just to hang out.
Customers--primarily women in their teens and 20s--check out each other’s clothes as well as the clothes on the rack. They listen to the “West Side Story” soundtrack and other old albums on the record player. They talk about their boyfriends, the party they went to the night before and the party they’re going to tonight.
In short, they do the kinds of things girls do when they’re in each other’s bedrooms.
“I don’t want this to be a place where people walk in and go ‘Hi’ and then leave. It’s more like a friendship thing,” says Ladies Lounge owner Michelle Ponce. “When people come in, they’re happy. They just have fun. And the ‘50s was a fun decade. The colors were great--all the turquoise and pink. And I like the ‘50s shapes. Everything’s curvy.”
Ladies Lounge has one of the most unusual dressing rooms in Orange County. Ponce has cordoned off a corner of the store with chartreuse velvet curtains suspended on rods by strands of faux pearls. Inside, a mirrored disco ball hangs from the ceiling, and the wall is decorated with a shadow box filled with Barbies.
On a recent Saturday morning at the lounge, assistant manager Genie McCarthy stands behind the counter in a white furry coat and short blond pigtails, eating a breakfast of Taco Bell nachos and bemoaning a lack of sleep from the night before.
Ponce rests on the green couch, battling the early signs of flu and sporting oval-shaped sunglasses. Mara Szabo, a 22-year-old Costa Mesa resident and lounge regular, arrives in a fake leopard coat, bell-bottom jeans, a crop top and huge, clompy platforms.
“I want my bedroom to look like this,” Szabo says. “I love Barbies, and I love pink and all of the old-fashioned stuff. It’s like a museum from the ‘50s.”
She tries on a pair of pink plastic sunglasses adorned with daisies and checks her look in the mirror.
“Oh, I love these!” she says.
Szabo and other lounge patrons want a look that’s different from standard mall fare. Ponce likes to seek out smaller, lesser-known clothing labels (including locals Love and Paper Doll) and then buy up their edgier “statement pieces.”
“I go to New York and I look for the kinds of clothes kids look for but can’t find,” she says. “A lot of stores don’t like to take chances on new designers.”
Many styles look like they were designed for ‘60s sex kitten Brigitte Bardot or TV babe Marcia Brady. On the racks are filmy baby dolls and negligees, frilly French maid aprons, black vinyl jackets with furry cuffs, ‘50s-style sweet 16 dresses, brown velvet bell-bottoms, flower power jumpsuits and little purses made of fur, vinyl and feathers.
“Everything’s fun and furry and individual,” says Szabo, petting a white furry coat. “It’s a girl’s dream.”
The clothes are “girlie but not prissy,” she says, pointing out racier items such as an orange vinyl miniskirt and tiny leopard-print apron that was not intended for cooking over a hot stove.
“It’s not Laura Ashley,” Szabo says.
Ponce, 28, opened Ladies Lounge above a skate shop on Balboa Island in 1994 before moving to Costa Mesa a year ago.
“Designing this store was the best part about the business. I only really have fun when I create,” she says.
Ponce moved in and painted the walls pistachio, pink and yellow. She filled the place with stuff she’d collected at thrift stores, discount stores and garage sales.
“I’d go everywhere--even the dollar stores and Kmart. Everywhere has something,” she says. “People’s garages are the best.”
She found her prized pink bowling ball at Kmart:
“I like bowling, I have my own ball, and I’m going to start my own team,” she says. “I also like the old trophies--the shape of them.”
A ‘50s pink and black dinette set stands in the middle of the store, as does an old refrigerator that now displays T-shirts.
“People always want to buy the furniture,” Ponce says.
Ponce, a Dana Point resident, divides her time between the store and Dita Eyewear in San Clemente, where she works as a designer and sales rep. Ponce helped put Dita into high-end optical shops by designing sunglasses inspired by vintage frames given to her by her grandmother.
She created Dita’s pointy cat-eyed frames and ‘60s-style ovals in some of her favorite ‘50s colors, including pink, and it was her idea to display the sunglasses in glass cake display trays.
Although she loves collecting things from the ‘50s and ‘60s, Ponce is a woman of the ‘90s who wouldn’t want to live in the past.
“Being a woman today, I’m able to do what I want to do,” she says. “I have fun.”