From shop rivalry to a family affair
LOS ANGELES — For years, the Cerpas sisters engaged in friendly competition. All three ran their own dress shops, the eldest from her home in Corona, California, and the two youngest just a block away from each other in downtown Santa Ana’s 4th Street district.
They sold gowns marking life passages: baptisms, communions, quinceañeras and weddings. A few years ago, Lilia Cerpas, the middle sister, opted to stand out from the rest and added the word “boutique” to the end of her shop’s name to lure a more affluent clientele.
But in mid-March, business dried up for the sisters as the coronavirus spread to Southern California. Lilia Cerpas, 51, fielded calls from brides who had postponed their weddings. Mothers called off communions, birthday parties and quinceañeras. She was stuck with the dresses and only half the payment. Her two sisters, Patricia Cerpas, 59, and Vicky Cerpas, 57, also watched their orders and incomes plummet.
“What am I going to do?” Lilia thought. “I’ll have to close.”
But a few days after she shuttered her store, Lilia got a call from a friend who told her about designers in New York City crafting fabric face masks. Her friend encouraged her to do the same.
“Yes!” Lilia said immediately. But she was low on cash and the month’s rent was due. She’d have to reach out to her sisters.
Lilia reminded them of what their mother, a clothing designer, used to say: “Nothing ventured. Nothing gained.”
After a bit of convincing, the two sisters were in. They set aside their “friendly rivalry” and for the first time in many years are in business together.
The three sisters grew up among the hum of sewing machines and mountains of fabric in their mother’s dress shop in Apatzingán in Mexico’s Michoacán state. They helped their mother in her shop, and she taught them how to sew at an early age.
The sisters have always been close, despite being quite different.
Lilia always has been the most impulsive. She’s known as the risk-taker — redesigning her shop and forgoing the more traditional ruffled dresses a few years ago to appeal to downtown 4th Street’s younger arrivals, a more affluent — and predominantly non-Latino
— clientele. To finance the sisters’ new mask-making venture, she nearly maxed out her credit card for supplies and materials, such as fabric, elastic and thread.
The youngest sister, Vicky, is more cautious and calculating.
For years, she hesitated to launch her own shop. Instead, she partnered with her older sister, Patricia. She took over her sister’s shop after Patricia moved her business to her home in Corona.
The store hasn’t changed much since then. It’s more traditional, the kind of place where colorful, fluffy and embellished quinceañera dresses take center stage. For their new joint project, Vicky said she would follow Lilia’s
lead and was willing to lend a hand and work the sewing machines. But she was too scared to invest any of her own money.
Patricia is the trailblazer — the first to move to the United States in the 1980s to open her shop on 4th Street. Her younger sisters followed her to Santa Ana, and all three worked together for a few years before Lilia set off on her own.
For the trio’s new venture, Patricia bankrolled the payroll with an infusion of cash, Lilia said.
Most of the face masks are made in a room the size of a walkin closet just across a long hallway that connects with Lilia’s secondfloor shop.
On most days, Lilia and Vicky are shuttered inside the workshop from morning to late nights, sometimes as late as 11 p.m.
In their sewing refuge, they shut out the world and news about the virus. They forget about how a once-bustling 4th Street has suddenly become deserted and how security grates line the windows of most stores.
The sisters lose themselves in the rhythmic clatter of the sewing machine. Their focus is on the task at hand, which can be taxing but also therapeutic, the sisters said.
“We lose track of time,” Lilia said.