LONG BEACH >> Merry’s in Bluff Heights might be the only business in the city with a “perception receptacle,” a small wicker basket with a note: “Before entering, please dispose of any prejudice, bias or preconceived notion of any type. They will be available upon your departure.”
The basket sits outside Merry’s front door and next to the shop’s mascot, Humphrey, a life-size camel constructed of recycled tin.
Merry’s, located on the Broadway Corridor just west of Temple Avenue, resembles a Middle Eastern bazaar, but it’s more than a fashion oasis. It’s an oasis of cultural and social awareness, featuring sweatshop-free fashions designed and handcrafted by indigenous artisans. The shop’s tagline is “Fashion with passion from faraway lands.”
The 850-square-foot store is a kaleidoscope of clothes, jewelry, accessories and home decor from Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries. The rainbow-colored dressing rooms resemble desert tents.
The shop is owned by Merry Colvin, 70, a former East Coast runway model who owned a similar store in a Portland, Ore., suburb during the 1990s. Her husband, Dallas, 77, is the business manager.
Cultural bridges
Colvin’s mission is to use her store as a bridge between her customers and people and cultures in faraway lands.
“I believe cultural awareness is the key to world peace,” said Colvin, dressed in a hot pink Hindu prayer shawl over a black, sleeveless Moroccan tunic and black Indian skirt. Her ensemble is accessorized with Egyptian earrings and vintage Afghan bracelets.
“What we don’t understand becomes the other, and we vilify it and it becomes the enemy,” she said. “But when we understand people whose cultures and beliefs are different than ours, that’s the first step to peace.”
Her altruism also has paid off financially: Merry’s sales for 2013 were up 10 percent compared with 2012, she said.
Merry’s has an inventory of more than 100 items representing more than a dozen countries, including Syria, Iran, Iraq, Peru, Guatemala, Turkey, Mongolia and Mexico. She carries men’s and women’s kaftans from Morocco and Egypt, men’s and women’s harem pants from India, kurts from Nepal, and scarves from Ethiopia, Kashmir and Pakistan.
“It’s not a store; it’s a story,” Colvin said. “This store is just one small part of the story of the world, which is ultimately the story of us all.
“When you touch or wear the shawl painstakingly embroidered by a woman in Kashmir, whom you will never meet, then she becomes a part of your story and you become a part of hers. Then you realize we are all part of the same story.”
The store receives new goods weekly, but since many of the artisans are nomads, refugees or reside in isolated villages, their work is one-of-a-kind, and Colvin never knows what will arrive. Once it’s sold out, it can’t be reordered.
Colvin is enthusiastic about her merchandise and shares an item’s origins as well as the story behind it.
The Sacred Threads pashminas are hand-loomed by a group of women’s co-op in India. Each garment has a tag with a biography on the co-op.
Colvin also points out the turquoise neck pieces and prayer torans handcrafted by Tibetan refugees living in India.
“Even though this store is as cluttered as it is, I know where everything came from, how it was made and how the people are being supported,” Colvin said.
Costume designer Bill Dixon has been a loyal Merry’s customer for more than five years.
“When you walk into her store, every corner has a little set up and is beautifully displayed. It’s like a different region of the world,” Dixon said. “We connected well because she knows her merchandise. She knows the history of the garments. She does it in a warm way.”
Dixon also shops at the Fashion District in downtown Los Angeles, but said Merry’s is the only place he can find Tibetan jewelry.
“Her store is the only place I can find the oversized stuff,” he said. “It’s more authentic to the country. It makes a statement.”
Fashion and activism
While attending Temple University in 1966, Colvin, a Philadelphia native, started modeling with a local department store. Eventually she was recruited to be a runway model in Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C., with Oleg Cassini, the fashion designer who dressed first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and was renowned for his simple geometric dresses and pillbox hats, plus Italian designer Emilio Pucci and Diane von Furstenberg.
But in the mid-1970s, Colvin left the runway.
“Modeling was the most inane thing I had ever done,” she said. “It was so shallow.”
After visiting her younger brother in Long Beach, Colvin moved to the area in 1979. She met Dallas a short time later and the couple married Feb. 14, 1980.
A few years later, the couple moved to southwestern Oregon and the tiny hamlet of Agness, an isolated area in the foothills of the Siskyiou Mountains, before settling, in 1987, in Lake Oswego, just outside of Portland.
Colvin was active in environmental causes, such as protecting old-growth trees and saving open space.
On several occasions, she protested forest clear-cutting by having herself tied to a tree when bulldozers were approaching.
“That was no big deal. I always tied myself to a tree when we were bullied at a protest or someone was threatening to cut down an ancient tree,” Colvin said. “Those were the good old days.”
In 1995, Colvin met a local woman wearing a pale blue Moroccan top and skirt, and fell in love with the clothing’s feminine, exotic and sensual look. A short time later, Colvin opened Merry’s Barefoot Boutique. The 900-square-foot store carried jewelry, belly-dancing attire and garb from Egypt, Morocco and India.
But in 1999, Lake Oswego demolished the block where Merry’s Barefoot Boutique was located and built a new mall. The Colvins returned to Long Beach the following year.
Colvin worked at a variety of retail clothing stores in Long Beach and Seal Beach before opening Merry’s on July 23, 2006.
