Melody Sabatasso stood in the lobby of San Francisco’s Huntington Hotel, arms overflowing with a handcrafted denim patchwork skirt, a jacket and an assortment of other sewing equipment. She had just hitchhiked across the Golden Gate Bridge and to the top of Nob Hill from Marin County, and she wasn’t amused to learn at the front desk that her famous client refused to see her for a final fitting. The budding designer wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Eventually, everyone relented, and she made her way to the hotel room, fuming.

“So I get up there after telling her, ‘Excuse me, I’m a woman just like you, and ... I don’t appreciate being ignored — I’ve worked very hard on this,’” Sabatasso said a handful of decades later inside her bustling, wood-paneled studio, which is located down an endless boardwalk about 15 miles north of San Francisco.

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Some of fashion designer Melody Sabatasso’s custom denim designs, which are made out of recycled denim pieces, appear inside her home work studio in Greenbrae, Calif., on Nov. 18, 2025.

It turns out the refusal stemmed from personal love life issues.

Leaving the room after the fitting, the customer asked in her signature, sultry voice how much everything cost. It was $75 for the skirt and $125 for the jacket, Sabatasso nervously replied  — she normally charged $40 for a skirt, tops. The actress looked at her and asked if this was just the deposit.

“You don’t know your worth,” Sabastasso recalled her saying.

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Weeks later, after the items were shipped, she received a check for “a couple of thousand dollars” from Lauren Bacall in the mail along with a handwritten note.

A handwritten note from Lauren Bacall to fashion designer Melody Sabatasso hangs on a wall inside Sabatasso’s home in Greenbrae, Calif., on Nov. 18, 2025.

The words of encouragement from the Hollywood legend, who challenged stereotypes about women with her strong portrayals in “To Have and Have Not” and “The Big Sleep” and who defined tailored suits, prompted Sabatasso’s mother to pack up her life and travel across the country to help her daughter launch her namesake business: Love, Melody.

A sewing machine inside Melody Sabatasso’s home work studio in Greenbrae, Calif., on Nov. 18, 2025.

In the coming years, custom Love, Melody creations would outfit global icons, including Elvis and Priscilla Presley, Sonny and Cher, Natalie Wood, Ann-Margret and dozens of other household names — and it all started with piles of denim she salvaged for pennies.

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Though she was born in New York City, Sabatasso was primarily raised in Miami Beach. “There was only [a] couple of hotels ... you could see the whole beach,” she said, reflecting on her childhood. “We’d get hurt. My mother would say, ‘Just dive in the ocean.’”

A designer herself, her mother, Alma, sold her fashions under the name Alma Petti. Her creations ranged from poodle skirts to elegant two-piece ensembles, which Melody and her girlfriends would model at cabanas and hotels along the beach.

Sabatasso described her mother, who was just 5 feet tall, as a force. “Tiny, and she’s dynamite, little dynamo,” she said.

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The mother-daughter relationship would prove to be a powerhouse union, but the younger Sabatasso had experiences to be gained. At age 17, she headed to New York City to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology, but she instead gravitated to the counterculture scene in Greenwich Village. “Bob Dylan was my hero and my psychiatrist,” she said. “They were all right down there.”

Melody Sabatasso holds a photo of her mom, shown inside her home work studio in Greenbrae, Calif., on Nov. 18, 2025.

A detailed view of a custom denim outfit made out of recycled denim parts, which Melody Sabatasso designed for Lauren Bacall. The outfit appears inside her home work studio in Greenbrae, Calif., on Nov. 18, 2025.

After graduating, Sabatasso briefly returned to Miami, and after a detour to attend Woodstock, landed in Laurel Canyon for a couple of years. There, she lived in a storied one-room cabin on Utica Drive, previously occupied by one of the greatest living songwriters — a fact she didn’t fully appreciate until decades later. “I lived in Neil Young’s old house up on top,” she said. Reaching the modest home was a trek. “... You had to walk, like, 200 steps,” she explained.

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Years later, while watching the documentary “Echo in the Canyon,” she saw the address flash on the screen: 8451 Utica........

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