Local longtime shop Indiana Joan’s closes its doors after 23 years in Malibu.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
When the funky, unique clothing boutique Indiana Joan’s closed recently because they lost their lease, Malibu resident and longtime customer Lynda Marsolek was heartbroken.
“A little piece of Malibu’s history is gone,” she said. “It was one of those stores that, every time you’d go, you found a little treasure.”
The store closed its doors at the Malibu Country Mart on April 30, ending a 23-year run of what proprietor Joan Bryant called “a place where you suspend your real life at the door.”
The last weeks in the store were a balance of selling down inventory and stifling tears.
“It was the passing of an era,” Joan said.
With a background as a successful women’s fashion designer, Bryant, along with husband and partner Hugh Bryant, opened Indiana Joan’s in 1985, primarily as an outlet for some of her own pieces.
“At my place, it was always about playing dress up,” Joan said. “My customers got to be Queen for the Day and they could walk out the door outfitted head to toe for dinner at a price that was affordable. My motto was always that we have the friendliest store with no attitude.”
Joan’s promotional savvy had taken the Bryants from a spot on the Venice boardwalk to wholesale manufacturing in their own factories to retail merchandising in the tonier climes of Malibu.
“I was a junior neurobiology professor at UCLA making about $17,000 a year,” Hugh said. “I was an academic and knew nothing about business. Then Joan taught me to sew and we were putting her stuff into stores on consignment. Everyone kept saying ‘She’s a great designer!’ so we decided to get a spot in Venice and see how we flew.”
Within six months, they had enough money to buy a house, and her designs were disappearing from the racks. They contracted with a factory to produce more inventory, eventually purchasing their own factory and then another.
Their son recommended that they open a retail shop on Melrose Avenue at the height of television’s “Melrose Place” and “Beverly Hills, 90210” craze. But their shop, situated a little too far west on the avenue, taught them the most valuable lesson they learned in retailing.
“Location, location, location,” Hugh said, ruefully.
A friend directed them to Malibu Country Mart.
“In ’89, we stopped manufacturing because we couldn’t compete with the companies producing stuff overseas and just concentrated on retail,” Hugh said.
The “Raider of the Lost Ark” movies were hot then and Joan is from Indiana, so she thought it was a clever name to use for the store. In fact, one of her best customers is Steven Spielberg’s mom, Leah Adler, who was very disappointed at the store’s closure.
Joan attributes the store’s longevity to a consistent eye for style, reasonable prices, a familial ambiance (daughter Kelly was Joan’s “right-hand man” and ran day-to-day operations) and “stuff made for real women, not sticks.”
Joan’s fashion sense was honed by years of pursuing Seventeen magazine and her fashion ability by the necessity of having to create her own outfits.
“We had no money and mom was very thrifty,” Joan explained. “If I wanted it, I had to make it. And I have an ability to go to market, scan things quickly and pick out beautiful clothes at ‘the people’s’ price point.’
“I have a problem with excess,” she continued in explaining her fashion philosophy. “Wearing a $3,000 jacket is offensive to me. Where’s your heart? You could put that money to helping other people. I’m happier to know that people remember my clothes because they wore it to their son’s graduation or a friend’s wedding.”
When asked to describe her early fashion leanings, Joan referred to the “flowy, feminine” look characterized in an iconic photo of her that appeared on the pages of a 1969 issue of Life magazine as the quintessential flower child of Woodstock, the “three days of peace and music” that changed the history of rock-and-roll.
For the 25th anniversary of the music festival, Newsweek magazine used the photo on its cover, asking the question, “Where are they now?”
“A customer brought the magazine in to show me,” Joan said. “Her husband worked for Newsweek, so she hooked us up and their people came in to interview me.”
The brief flurry of notoriety didn’t impress her as much as finding one of her own labels in a thrift shop one day.
“I figured I had arrived,” she said.
But now she’s going.
After an emotional journey of closing up shop, the Bryants are weighing their options for the future.
Hugh runs a computer consulting business but he knows Joan won’t stay still for long.
“I’m looking around for another location,” Joan said. “Meanwhile, I’m asking all my old customers to drop me an e-mail so I can let them know when I find someplace. We went out with a bang, but I’ll be back.”
Joan Bryant can be reached at joan@indyjoan.com.