Sweet Success, With Help From Friends

When a doctor phoned to alert Marie Marcal about the cancerous lump in her left breast, the now 35-year-old didn’t return the call. Eleven months slipped away before her doctor tracked her down on Independence Day this year and admonished her to seek treatment immediately.

Marcal should have known better than to ignore medical advice.

Her mother had lucked out when specialists judged her lump benign, but her grandmother and great-grandmother weren’t so fortunate. Her grandmother survived her malignancy; her great-grandmother did not.

“I was so scared to go in,” remembers Marcal, a lithe figure despite the 15 pounds she has gained since her chemotherapy ceased just before Thanksgiving.

What she feared more than her mortality was the effects that the treatment could have on the new love in her life. After years of giving her ideas and sweat to others in the fashion industry, Marcal was finally set to launch a signature label.

“I kept telling myself, ‘By the time you’re in your mid-30s, girl, you’re going to bust out.’ ”

For all its superfluous glamour, the rag trade is among the most taxing, as well as cutthroat. It’s not what a doctor would order when prescribing a no-stress environment.

Life wasn’t running smoothly for Marcal while she was producing her samples. She was paying rent with unemployment checks, filling her gas tank on scavenged pennies. When the diagnosis arrived, she was suddenly faced with undergoing life-saving care her basic health insurance didn’t cover.

Instead of dropping everything to resolve the cancer, Marcal plodded on in search of a financial backer and planning a fashion show that would announce her debut spring collection.

Her friends nagged her about her health.

They bombarded her with phone numbers of doctors and centers that would fit her restricted budget. They badgered her when she considered rescheduling a doctor’s visit to attend a trade show. They hosted Tupperware-style gatherings in their homes and workplaces, where women swarmed racks of Marcal’s designs, to raise money for her care and lift her spirits.

And they prayed together.

“Of course, it’s always easier to throw yourself into something than face death,” says Mary Conklin, 21, one of the women Marcal calls “a pillar.” The two met this summer at the Crew Salon in Costa Mesa, where Conklin is manager and in-house makeup artist and Marcal is a client.

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“It was a risky thing for her to do, to not take it easy, to keep on working on her line,” Conklin says. “It made me very nervous. But it worked. I think she found comfort in getting her line going. What’s so striking is it sharpened her focus.”

Conklin and Marcal’s Hermosa Beach neighbor Marita Palafox supported their friend, though they both admit to questioning her sanity a few times.

“She’s just so driven and filled with this energy,” says Palafox, a 23-year-old operations coordinator for an investment manager. “Marie just really motivates me to do positive things.”

The height of the madness came in late October. On a Monday, three months after the first lump was removed, a second was excised. Two days later, instead of recovering, Marcal met with representatives of a Hong Kong company, Fast King, interested in financing her new label. She sealed the deal with them before Friday night, when she unveiled the collection before friends, strangers and a television crew at the Lab Anti-mall in Costa Mesa.

More than a dozen looks--sexy, forward and liberating--were trotted down the runway that evening. Liquid jersey dresses and washable gabardine trousers ranked among the audience’s favorites.

(The collection will be shipped in February to Fred Segal in Santa Monica, H. Lorenzo in Los Angeles and Diamond Lane in Huntington Beach.)

Proceeds from a raffle of donations from Lab stores benefited a library of breast cancer information being set up by the local chapter of the American Cancer Society. The host of “Solutions,” a PBS program that focuses on breast cancer-related events and education, buzzed around speaking to everyone involved, including the hairdressers and models who donated their time.

Marcal, who showcases her collection in a New Mart showroom in downtown Los Angeles, will integrate breast cancer facts in future clothing tags and ads, extend support to research fund-raising events and spread the word about self-exams to customers at in-store trunk shows.

“Just as an actor would use his fame to spread the word for a good cause, as a designer I need to use my contact with women to inform them about this,” she says, laying an open hand where the lumps once ravaged.

About one in eight American women are diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

Conklin, who masterminded the Lab fashion show, takes the cause personally, having had an aunt and cousin and now a friend who have suffered from the disease. “It’s hitting me from every direction,” she notes, adding that she has since become involved in the cancer society’s make-over program for breast cancer patients.

Palafox, too, knows the effects of breast cancer. “My mom is a survivor. Marie reminds me so much of her. She’s been a catalyst for me getting involved in fund-raising.”

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Marcal grew up in Huntington Beach and designed a spirited junior line, Stella, out of a live-and-work studio there before shutting down operations in 1994 when her Japanese backer bowed out.

She designed women’s sportswear and snowboard gear in Japan, but returned to L.A. after a year, where she bounced around several labels as a freelancer, consultant and in-house designer.

“I knew I was going to go out there and put my name on a label again,” Marcal says. “I worked for companies and I saw that the chiefs were treated so great but the Indians who really made a difference were not. Just because I’m the designer doesn’t mean I’m somehow better than anyone else.”

The discovery of cancer strengthened Marcal’s resolve to tailor her life without compromises. In the deal with her Hong Kong backer, she secured benefits for her 10 employees. She cut a percentage of the company for her pattern maker, Grace Lee, who stuck by her even when Marcal couldn’t pay her.

She continues to visit her doctor at UCLA weekly, though she has had a clean bill of health since the last operation. “I was very fortunate to beat this,” she says. “I owe [my recovery] to my faith as much as my friends.”