When I think back to my teenage years, Malibu was my compass. Long before I lived here, before Malibu Soul ever existed, I knew its pull. My friends and I would pack into whoever’s car we could get our hands on — most often a CJ7 Jeep — and head down Kanan Road with the windows open, music blasting, and the smell of salt already in the air. Our destination was almost always the same: Zuma 7.
Zuma 7 wasn’t just a stretch of beach; it was our arena, our playground, our rite of passage. We would spend entire days under the sun, setting up makeshift camps in the sand, playing beach volleyball until our legs felt like jelly, and laughing in the kind of way only teenagers can — free, reckless, and endless.
Of course, we didn’t think about sunscreen. We wore our sunburns like badges of honor, peeling skin and all, proof that we had lived another day in the Malibu sun. Looking back, I see the irony — how much we worshipped that fiery star in the sky, letting it kiss us red, never realizing how much it was marking us with its power and permanence.
The Teenage Self
When I remember that girl — bare feet on hot sand, salt in her hair, wind on her face — I see both her wildness and her longing. She didn’t know yet about the storms life would bring: heartbreaks, illnesses, reinventions. All she knew was the immediacy of joy, the simplicity of sun and sand, friends and freedom.
Zuma 7 gave me more than sunburns and volleyball blisters. It gave me a sense of belonging to a place that felt larger than me, a place that whispered to my soul: one day, you’ll be home here.
Threads of Malibu Soul
Now, when I walk Zuma as an adult, I sometimes see flashes of her — my teenage self. She’s still there, somewhere between the volleyball nets and the shoreline, laughing and chasing the waves, her skin burning without care. And I realize that she, too, is part of the fabric of Malibu Soul.
Because Malibu Soul isn’t just a jewelry line — it’s a reflection of all the pieces of me, woven together. The teenage girl on Zuma, the woman I am now, and the one I am still becoming.
Zuma 7 is where my love affair with Malibu began — where sun, salt, and spirit first imprinted themselves on me. Maybe that’s why every collection I create carries a trace of her: that barefoot, sunburned teenager who believed that Malibu was more than a place. It was a destiny.