HOLLY NADLER
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Location, location, location equals Lemonade, Becca Rogers’s new accessories boutique, just opened over Memorial Day weekend. This sleek and cheerful shop sits between Linda Jean’s and Mary’s Linen and two doors down from Sharky’s. Everybody visiting Oak Bluffs for the first time saunters at least halfway up from the harbor into town, so Lemonade will skim the crème de lacrème looking for any type of apparel beyond a T-shirt.
A word about the unfounded rumor of the T-shirt shortage in Oak Bluffs: A few spanky-new T-shirt outlets have recently opened on Circuit and, to the perennial question, “Do we need yet another T-shirt shop?” the answer is a Fenway Stadium-sized cadre of fans screaming “yes!” I don’t have the exact figures at my fingertips, but let us assume that most men wear mostly T-shirts most of the time. Women make a little more effort to vary their wardrobe, but most of us wear T-shirts some of the time. So what a T-shirt retailer (a T-tailer?) is doing is quite simply servicing America’s preponderant clothing needs. If the majority of us walked around in potato sacks, Oak Bluffs would have 37 potato sack dealers in operation.
But Becca Rogers is going for the sophisticate unwilling to leave her house without wrapping a pretty scarf around her neck or affixing sparkling gems to her ears. Then she’ll need to don a rakish hat, and sling a soft leatherlike but vegan bag over her shoulder. It’s the Ab Fab factor of grooming.
“I always wanted some connection with the fashion world,” Becca says, seated on the cordovan-colored sofa in her shop. “When I was a kid I dreamed of one day being a fashion designer.”
Those pipe dreams would have occurred in Concord, where she grew up, although she also spent several summers at the Girl Scout Sailing Camp on the Oak Bluffs side of the Lagoon, thus launching the classic lifelong passion for the Vineyard to which so many of us have fallen victim.
All through college at Hobart William Smith, then living in New York, the fashion bug kept biting her. And yet, after a powwow with designer Todd Oldman, she realized it was better to learn finances than creativity since the latter can’t be taught. She went on to earn an M.B.A. at Simmons College in Boston.
But life intervened, as it always does, steering one in unanticipated directions. Becca moved to the Vineyard in 1997 and worked for the Black Dog in merchandising and also as a project manager for various construction companies.
“My last boss started telling me I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”
On the side, of course, Becca had been flexing her fashion muscles: On Saturdays she tended the counter at the sublimely colorful and unique O.B. gallery Craftworks, plus she crafted her own jewelry of copper, silver and seaglass.
Finally last winter a sign in the window of the empty space next door to Linda Jean’s attracted Becca’s attention, and now Lemonade has come into being. The newborn fashionista has begun to fill the showroom with scarves, hats, jewelry, handbags and a rack of girls’ clothes made by Islander Rachel Rooney. A pitcher of lemonade sits invitingly on a front table, backed by bags of Martha’s Vineyard cookies à la Judy Rogers (no relation to Becca). The chatelaine of Lemonade also plans to stock the space with arts and crafts produced by her circle of friends.
And circles of friends, along with fresh-off-the-boat newcomers and shop-happy Vineyarders, are bound to fill this fun venue. Cheyenne Vandall (artist and new mom of seven-month-old Stella) and Sharon Strimling will share hosting duties with Becca.
If you’re into beautiful accessories, see you there. If not, have I got a T-shirt for you!
On a perfect day, nearly 200 gathered to celebrate Evangeline & Company’s fifth annual Garden Party, on Sunday, May 30, at adjacent homes of Joseph Parham, David and Rita Sirignano, and Al and Thelma Johnson on Greenleaf avenue in Oak Bluffs. Guests included Tom and Sharon Smith, founders of Four Star Nursery and partners in Proven Winners; Sissy Biggers, host of Plum TV’s home and garden show; and Karen Holmes Ward of Boston’s Channel 5. A scrumptious lunch was staged by container baskets filled with supertunia, mini yellow petunia and superbena lilac verbena by Dee Dice of Eden. Louise Sweet of Flowers on the Vineyard provided pitchers overflowing with white Casa Biana lilies and Duchesse de Numours’ peonies. Wow.
Last Friday, the eighth grade social studies class, under the guidance of teacher Amie Lukowitz, held its second annual great debate. The issues kicked around were the use of wind energy, over-fishing, taxing sweetened beverages, creating a middle school, funding Farm to School programs, saving the beaches, regulating organic and free-range products, licensing moped drivers and increasing penalties for steroid use. No small talk with that crowd!
This coming month’s children’s and young adults’ schedule at the Oak Bluffs library are as follows: June 19, 11 to 11:45 a.m., Saturday surprise storytime; Wednesday, June 23, 10:30 to 11:15 a.m., toddler storytime, ages one-and-a-half to three, and Mermaids from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., preschool storytime, ages three to five. Wednesday, June 30, 10:30 to 11:15 a.m., toddler storytime, ages one-and-a-half to three, and trucks, 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., preschool storytime, ages three to five.
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