Boutique Clothing Store Owners Have Been Southampton Village Staple For Decades

In the early 1970s, Deborah and Jack Ohana were operating their own retail store in Queens. It was a business that suited them both, but there was a problem — they kept getting held up.

One Sunday, in the spring of 1975, they decided to get away from the city for a few hours and take a drive to Southampton. Their first visit to the East End wound up being “divine providence,” Ms. Ohana said, as the leisurely day trip ultimately turned into a life-altering pivot.

After eating lunch at Silver’s on Main Street, they spotted a large “for lease or rent” sign in the window of the adjacent shopfront, and while they were jotting down the number, the building’s landlord walked by and struck up a conversation. Two days later, they had a deal. Deborah and Jack opened DeeJay’s in June 1975 and have been running the boutique clothing store ever since.

Their ability to survive and thrive as a mom-and-pop business that has remained brick-and-mortar only is a testament to the relationships they have cultivated with their customers and the staying power of the reputation they’ve built over more than 45 years in business.

On a sunny day earlier this month, the couple — who have been together for half a century — spoke about the origins of their business and relationship and the longevity of both while sitting on a small white leather sofa adorned with plush black pillows with a gentle late summer breeze filtering through the open door. The deep respect and admiration they have for each other is easily observable and likely the key to their success, though Mr. Ohana is quick to praise his wife when it comes to pinning down a reason why the store has stayed in business for so many years.

“She loves the business; this is what she’s done all her life,” Mr. Ohana said, in his French accent, staring lovingly at her while holding a black leather fedora in his lap. “She’s always known how to buy and sell, and people really appreciate her. They say, ‘What she tells me to buy, I buy. She knows my body and I trust her completely.’”

Ms. Ohana is the kind of woman whose own fashion sense generates immediate trust in her opinions and instincts. She sums up the aesthetic of DeeJay’s as “classic, with an edge,” a motif that is present both in the tableau of the store and in her own personal attire. During the interview, she wore perfectly fitted slim black pants and a black sleeveless top with silver bangles — silver-painted thick-framed black Celine sunglasses completing the look.

The store has the same kind of chic, effortless aura, not quite minimalistic but also not fussy or overcomplicated.

“We sell functional clothes,” Ms. Ohana said. “Not clothes that you wear once and then sit in your closet for two years. You can actually wear the clothes.”

Over the years, DeeJay’s has followed a tried and true pattern when it comes to presenting merchandise throughout the seasons — in the spring and summer, it’s a predominantly white look, with brighter colors like pinks, blues and tangerines mixed in. When fall returns, the baseline goes back to black, with grays, browns and this year, in particular, olives filling out the palette.

“We don’t do a mishmash of this and that style or prints,” Ms. Ohana said. “And because it’s vignettes, the merchandise is very edited. We have a large stockroom, and it changes every week or two.”

Over the years, Ms. Ohana has refined her sense of style and the DeeJay’s brand when it comes to clothes, always keeping an eye toward what customers want as well. In the early days, the store’s scope was larger. When the Ohanas first opened in the 1970s, they occupied the entire building, selling a variety of merchandise on both the first and second floors, including furniture and other home decor in addition to clothing. After about a decade, the landlord informed them he wanted to split the store, meaning they’d be forced to narrow their offerings. Ms. Ohana admitted she was upset about that at the time. They briefly moved to South Florida, thinking they would relocate and start a business there, but Mr. Ohana eventually persuaded her to return, and Ms. Ohana now calls that change “a blessing in disguise.”

Following their instincts and knowing when to make a move or to stay put has been a theme for the Ohanas. Mr. Ohaha lived in Casablanca, Morocco, until he was 18, and still carries with him a French accent from spending his formative years there when the country was under Nazi occupation. He emigrated to the United States in 1955, following his sister, Marguerite, who had married an American soldier she met while he was stationed in their home city. Coming to the United States was something everyone wanted to do at that time, Mr. Ohana said, and by the 1960s, he had a successful career as an engineer, working for big-name companies like IBM, joining the team that developed the lens for the Hubble Space Telescope.

But Mr. Ohana said he did not enjoy the lifestyle that came with that type of work; being required to move somewhere new every five years meant he’d never be able to buy a home and settle down. So he moved into retail, taking a job at his brother-in-law’s head shop in Queens, where they sold peasant blouses, pipes and other paraphernalia, in what Mr. Ohana called “a hippie store.” Before long, they opened another shop, which Mr. Ohana ran. When his brother-in-law asked him which salesgirl he’d like to work alongside in the new store, Mr. Ohaha chose the young woman who routinely came in during her lunch break and worked for free just because she enjoyed being there.

“I married the boss,” Ms. Ohana said, with a laugh and a twinkle in her eye as they recounted their early days in business and in love.

It’s a partnership that’s stood the test of time, personally and professionally, but the fact that they’ve been similarly successful at cultivating relationships with their clientele is equally important, Ms. Ohaha said. “We’ve had wonderful customers over the years. We have three generations of some customers now, and it’s so precious. The grandmother will come in with the daughter and granddaughter, and they’ll shop together.”

The joy and deep satisfaction Ms. Ohana derives from helping her customers find clothes that make them look good and feel good is plainly obvious. She delights in telling stories about them, remembering not only specific items they bought but why they were buying them. She says she likes to “spoil” her customers and takes pride in providing the kind of attentive service, like offering alterations, that has largely become a relic in today’s fast-paced world.

That kind of respect and deference is mutual; Ms. Ohana said customers trust her “eye,” her sense of style and the way she puts thought and intention into presenting the clothing in the store.

It requires a significant investment of time and energy, but when the point is made that it’s probably fun, too, Ms. Ohana’s eyes light up.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “Did you ever get an unlimited budget and say, ‘Let’s go shopping?’ Some people live to eat. I live to shop.”

It’s why, even as Ms. Ohana and her husband are, by traditional standards, beyond retirement age, they are still showing up daily at the shopfront they spotted so many years ago, as they’ve watched other businesses come and go, even long-term staples like Silver’s, where they sat down for lunch during that first visit to Southampton. Ms. Ohana said she’ll be behind the cash register and pulling together ensembles for customers “as long as my body says it can keep working,” although she acknowledged that, at some point in the not too distant future, Mr. Ohana would like to retire and spend at least half the year in either Morocco, Portugal or Spain.

They are both proud of the legacy they’ve built in the village, as a store that draws not only generations of loyal customers from the same local families but also a fair share of celebrity shoppers over the years: from politicians to news anchor Peter Jennings, actresses Diane Keaton and Susan Lucci, famed choreographer Bob Fosse, journalist Barbara Walters and, one of Ms. Ohana’s favorites, the supermodel Twiggy.

As they rattled off the names of high-profile shoppers, Mr. and Ms. Ohana’s niece, Alexis Graf, who was in the store with them that day, marveled at the fact that DeeJay’s has remained successful and profitable to date despite little or no advertising or promotion, no online sales and only a small and relatively recent presence on Instagram. Ms. Ohana laughed breezily, before saying, “We’re like dinosaurs.”

When it was suggested the couple was significantly more stylish than the average dinosaur, Ms. Ohana laughed again before agreeing, “We’re very chic dinosaurs.”