There is no reason that protecting one’s skin from sun damage and cancer also has to result in a sacrifice of fashion and style of their clothing.
This is a question Melissa Papock posed nearly two decades ago and it is the reason she started her business Cabana Life.
“We launched the business in 2005 with our first collection, and actually started with children’s clothing, before adding women’s clothing in 2012,” Papock said.
Today, Cabana Life primarily has women’s dresses along with resort and swimwear to go with some children’s apparel and even a small number of men’s styles available.
“We’ve gotten to the point where we can offer sun protection for the whole family,” Papock said.
For Papock, Cabana Life’s mission is very personal and the creation of it came from her own realization of how harmful the sun can be.
“I was 26 and working in New York City for a lot of the top beauty and fashion magazines, and thankfully for whatever reason, I went for a routine skin check at my dermatologist’s office,” Papock said. “I had a little pink spot on my arm, so it wasn’t your traditional black or brown mole, and I honestly thought it was just a scar from a mosquito bite since it was summer. I went back for a biopsy of it and it turned out to be melanoma, which is the most dangerous form of skin cancer.”
Two hundred stitches later, the spot was removed, and although she had a five-inch scar to remember it by, they were able to remove the threat.
“Looking back it looks like a miracle, because at 26 everyone feels like they’re healthy and invincible to things like that,” Papock said. “At the time, I thought of skin cancer as ‘cancer light,’ like so many young people do. I thought, ‘oh they can just cut it off and it will be fine,’ but the doctor told me that I could die from something like that.”
Her scary experience got her thinking, and she began asking questions about the steps and options people can take to help protect against sun damage and the harms it can present, as the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the world, with an average of one in every five Americans having some form of skin cancer in their lives.
According to Papock, she had this false sense of security that her typical cotton clothing was protecting her, but it turned out that even the skin being covered was only an sun protection factor of 5 or 7, which is very low on the scale.
Sun protection factor or SPF is used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to measure how much solar energy or UV radiation is required to produce sunburn on protected skin. The higher the SPF number, the more protection there is.
“Here I was working for a lot of the top fashion and beauty magazines reporting on all the trends, but I had never heard of sun protective clothing,” Papock said.
Once she started looking into it further she realized that most of the sun protective clothing was fluorescent and synthetic and just not something she saw as an appealing look.
“From then on, I’ve been hellbent on making the most luxurious, lightweight and breathable fabrics that still have a 50-plus UV protection, which is the highest rating available,” Papock said.
That mission continues to be the focal point of the business years later and it is something Papock and her staff have successfully seen grow and develop over that time to the point where they just recently moved their headquarters from Ponte Vedra Beach to Jacksonville Beach to accommodate the influx of interest with a bigger space.
“I wanted to use my experience to help spread the word so that they wouldn’t be sitting in my position and have to hear the word ‘cancer,’” Papock said.
A sample sale event is scheduled at the new Cabana Life headquarters located at 315 11th Ave. N. in Jacksonville Beach on Aug. 25 and 26.
The two-day event is open to the public and will showcase new styles of clothing at discounted prices with a portion of the event’s proceeds going to local charities.
For more information or to see the selection of clothing available go to cabanalife.com.
