By Tammy Smith
A few months after moving to Bay St. Louis from the Jackson area in April 2020, Tonya Hamby and her husband, David, were riding in his golf cart (a birthday present) in Old Town. When they reached 130 Blaize Ave., Tonya was smitten with the old building near the train depot. She envisioned it as the home of a project she and a couple of friends recently had undertaken.
“This is so cute!” Tonya recalls exclaiming. “Why is there nothing here?”
After meeting and talking with an electrician working in a nearby business location, they contacted the building’s owner and got the ball rolling to expand an online enterprise into a brick-and-mortar store.
Tonya and her friends, Sheila Runnels and Kacie Suber, had launched Mon Amie Boutique online in late September 2020, with sales starting not long after.
“It kept growing, and my family got tired of moving racks of clothing,” Tonya says.
“We were working out of her house originally,” Kacie adds.
The Hambys and friends began interior work on the building, doing everything but the electrical and plumbing themselves. Tonya, Kacie and Sheila let the building’s late-1920s origins guide them to finding Art Deco furnishings. Mon Amie’s soft opening was Feb. 1, and the store’s grand opening was June 3.
A licensed cosmetologist, Tonya chose fashion merchandising and marketing as elective courses in high school, where she advanced to national competitions in DECA. At Mississippi State University, she studied interior design.
“So I’ve always had an interest in this area,” she says.
Mon Amie’s goal is to offer fashions and an atmosphere that appeals to everyone, especially locals.
“We want to cater to everybody — every size, every shape,” Kacie says. “We want people to feel comfortable in here.”
“Of course, we love our visitors, but we wanted to offer a good shopping experience for everyone, especially locals,” Tonya adds. “Locals didn’t really have anywhere to shop locally, so we wanted to offer a good mix of clothing that’s appropriate for all ages. It’s hard to find that.”
Mon Amie’s most popular offerings include the Reversibles shoe line by Modzori; Rubber Band denim, made from recycled water bottles, and their own private label fashions.
Tonya, Kacie and Sheila have the sort of friendship where each one has the uncanny ability to know what the others are thinking, so working together has been easy. Sheila is considered the online guru, and Kacie takes photos of fashions and especially enjoys finding clothing that flatters plus-size customers.
Men are represented at Mon Amie with the Devil-Dog brand, which donates to the Wounded Warrior Project.
“A lot of things we carry have stories behind them, like the Devil- Dog items, like the locally made candles and some of our jewelry, which is made by employees,” Sheila says. “There’s a purpose behind every purchase.”
WANT TO GO?
Mon Amie Boutique
130 Blaize Ave., Bay St. Louis
(228) 304-2118
10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday- Saturday, 1-6 p.m. Sunday
https://campsite.bio/monamiebsl