When one door closes, another one opens," said Deb Mascia, reassuring fans of her shuttered Kailua boutique, Mu‘umu‘u Heaven, that she’s not going away.
Vintage enthusiasts can now find her at Hana Hou Vintage, where she’s focusing more on the vintage and collectible half of her business in response to demand. She started the store because, "I got tired of opening my warehouse every time someone called and said, ‘I want to see your untouchables.’"
Those "untouchables" are the vintage muumuu and other apparel she deemed too good to cut up for her designs. Some pieces have followed her for 30 years, since her teens spent growing up in Australia and through moves to New York and Hawaii.
Following in the footsteps of her grandmother and mother, Mascia began frequenting thrift shops in Melbourne when she was 10 and developed a unique sense of style.
"I’d go with my grandmother and gravitate toward old-people clothes. It was great because she could tell me all about them, dating to the ’20s," she said. "Then, in my teens, I started putting different eclectic pieces together when no one else was doing it. I wore twin sets with cat’s-eye glasses. I thought I looked sexy. Everyone else said it was quirky."
That quirkiness didn’t make her an outcast.
"I always got the cool-kid boys, the artist types and the surfer boys because they were thinking, ‘She’s a freak who walks to the beat of her own drum,’ and they liked that."
IT WASN’T until she reached Hawaii and started working at a thrift shop that she found her calling in rescuing vintage pieces and giving vintage fabrics new life.
"They were throwing away so many muumuus because they weren’t selling, and they asked me to take them to the dump but I couldn’t do that. So I asked if I could sew things from it. They ended up being my inspiration pieces."
The popularity of her "upcycled" garments and accessories led to the opening of Mu‘umu‘u Heaven eight years ago.
"As much pleasure as I get from them, I’ve always sold dresses off my body," she said. "I think it’s better to share them with people than to try to hold on to it. I think it’s really beautiful to share it. I have some girls who burst into tears when they find they can buy a wedding dress for $50. If you can’t afford a wedding dress at regular retail, I have things here that are $20."
She also offers up the Kailua boutique as a venue for private parties for up to six people at $25 each to have a dress-up party with refreshments and a stylist at their service.
As her upcycling ethic has caught on globally, Mascia has had several offers to open pop-ups abroad. While she contemplates her next retail foray, she’s most interested in writing a book on the relationship between fashion and eco-conscious living, a concept she struggles with as a fashion entrepreneur trying to reduce her own impact on the environment.
"I think it’s always been something I’ve always been conscious of," she said. "I never really fell into a lot of the trends and fads that other people were doing. When you see it as a trend and a fad and you thrift-shop like I do, you really get to see layers of fashion and moments that just pass by, and they become very wasteful. …
"To me there’s a nicer way to live, and vintage is another opportunity to do something good for the planet because it’s already here and it’s unique and it’s beautiful. I think it’s special."
And don’t rule out a Mu‘umu‘u Heaven return. Throughout the boutique’s run, Mascia had been approached to create pop-up boutiques by individuals from Japan to Dubai. The first opened last month at T Galleria Hawaii by DFS and is slated to continue through the end of June.
Hana Hou Vintage is at 35 Kainehe St. in Kailua. Call 261-2100. Visit honolulupulse.com/fashiontribe for a video.
