At a pop-up store in the center of South Coast Plaza, a Van Cleef & Arpels watch with a price tag approaching $400,000 was on display. The whimsical timepiece by the well-known French jeweler featured two figures who meet for a kiss in the middle of a bridge whenever the clock strikes 12 o’clock.
It was among 34 intricately designed watches on display at the immersive Costa Mesa pop-up store, which closed last week. About 30 yards away, its regular store also temporarily featured a jewelry piece retailing for under $2.9 million.
The lavish collections are all part of a strategy by South Coast Plaza to install high-end stores to attract the world’s richest customers.
“South Coast Plaza always strives to be on the forefront of fashion, dining and design,” Debra Gunn Downing, the plaza’s executive director of marketing, said. “Our boutiques, brands and restaurants reflect that.”
In recent years, stores like Roger Dubuis, Jacques Marie Mage and Amiri have opened their doors. Upcoming high-end apparel stores include Acne Studios and Khaite.
In fact, the plaza says it’s “home to the largest collection of luxury timepiece and jewelry boutiques–35 stores under one roof–in North America.”
The 287-store plaza has become so upscale that higher end tenants including Gucci and Bvlgari have expanded both their boutique spaces and product offerings this year.
The shopping center this year alone has opened almost 40 stores, all of which feature premium brands targeting affluent shoppers. Multiple retailers sit on a waiting list, hoping for spot.
“It is a Rubik’s Cube-like challenge,” Downing told the Business Journal. “Still, it’s a wonderful challenge to have because it speaks to the success story that is South Coast Plaza.”
Opening with Sears
When the plaza opened with 70 stores in 1967, one of its anchor tenants was Sears, which was known for supplying merchandise and household goods for the middle class.
About eight years later, co-founder Henry Segerstrom decided to emphasize the plaza as a luxury headquarters for both local and international shoppers.
Retail executives reminisce of the connections made and travels taken by the Segerstrom family patriarch to bring a variety of luxe operators to the city, many who have maintained a space at the plaza since opening.
Sears, which was sold to the plaza in 2017, remains closed with no disclosed plans.
Taking a page from the patriarch’s book, the shopping center keeps its 2.8 million square feet of retail and dining space in constant motion – whether it’s the Orange County debut of an up-and-coming fashion brand from Los Angeles or the relocation of a notable jeweler who counts 20 years at the center and wants to occupy more space.
The center reports annual taxable sales of $2.5 billion (see page 28).
The Business Journal in October toured Orange County’s largest shopping center, by sales and square footage, to get a look at a few of the newly renovated stores and hot new brands.
“The Most Beautiful Store in the World”
One luxury boutique to receive the expansion treatment this year was high-end jeweler Bvlgari.
The Italian brand took over a 5,000-square-foot corner boutique at the center’s Jewel Court on the west side.
The new store design digs into Bvlgari’s roots in Rome incorporating Italian-style materials and touches throughout the flagship boutique, such as an entrance made of white Travertino Navona marble, a chandelier of Murano glass, Bvlgari’s eight-point star in red porphyry on the tiled floor, wallpaper woven with Venice silk and other features that can be found in longstanding Bvlgari boutiques in Italy.
Bvlgari’s first-ever Creative Director Mary Katrantzou visited the newly designed space last month and said it was the brand’s “most beautiful store in the world,” according to Store Director Weili Yeh.
The larger space is meant to draw in new clients within the Orange County market, which Yeh describes as family oriented. The OC flagship is the first Bvlgari store to have a newly conceived watch salon and a leather goods and accessories wing as well as the first to sell the brand’s perfume collections.
It is also the first U.S. location to have a Bvlgari lounge and bar. With the reopening in April, the high-end jeweler debuted a California capsule collection exclusive to the Costa Mesa location featuring mandarin garnets and pink tourmalines to portray west coast sunsets.
Sunglasses to the Stars
One of this year’s new arrivals to the shopping center, Jacques Marie Mage, wanted to emphasize its focus on the Orange County market via limited edition products exclusive to the Costa Mesa store.
The eyewear maker, whose glasses run between $500 to $8,000, opened in July at South Coast Plaza. Movie stars like Jeff Goldblum and Brad Pitt have been seen wearing the luxe shades.
To mark its entry into OC, Jacques Marie Mage released three styles of sunglasses only available for purchase at the local store. Each one has the plaza’s 3333 Bristol St. address engraved on the inner temple of the glasses.
It is located on the first level in the Saks Fifth Avenue wing.
The gallery’s interior features wood siding, curated Navajo rugs and Japanese pottery, and an indoor desert garden composed of plants and cacti from the Joshua Tree area.
The Return of Courrèges
The first-ever luxury tenant to open at South Coast Plaza was Courrèges in 1975. The apparel company got its start in the 1960s and rose to popularity among the fashion styles of that decade.
The French fashion house later struggled and experienced a drop in business, leading it to close the store in 1982. Courrèges eventually returned to the center in July this year to establish a new West Coast flagship, a sign of the brand’s health following a creative turnaround led by the new head of artistic direction Nicolas Di Felice.
Courrèges now aims for younger consumers with contemporary offerings while paying tribute to some original pieces from the glory days, like its colorful vinyl jackets. The 1,200-square-foot boutique, designed by Belgian architect Bernard Dubois, is located on the plaza’s second level right next to the popular Din Tai Fung restaurant.
“Opening a store at South Coast Plaza is an important moment for any luxury brand with global ambitions,” Courrèges Chief Executive Adrien Da Maia said in a statement.
Two-Story Takeover
The expansion of the Gucci boutique is one of the more innovative moves taking place at South Coast Plaza.
Like its next-door neighbor Balenciaga, the Italian fashion house now spans across 17,500 square feet on both levels of the center — the second-floor space sits directly on top of the first floor. The flagship location, which reopened in May, can sell a wider selection of Gucci’s apparel and accessories assortment, including pieces exclusive to the Costa Mesa center.
Gucci and Balenciaga, which opened in late 2023, have the only two-story boutiques at South Coast.
A Time to Remember
Watchmaker Roger Dubuis, who moved its flagship store from Beverly Hills to Costa Mesa in 2022, is also bringing one-of-a-kind Swiss-made timepieces to South Coast Plaza.
On Oct. 30, the store revealed the newest watch from the fourth installation of its Excalibur collection.
The watch, the first one to be made in Geneva and delivered to North America, depicts 12 knights, six millimeters in height and hand engraved, surrounding a central hexagonal design using 18-carat gold and black glass, based off The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, a site referenced in one of the many Arthurian stories that inspired the capsule. Only 28 watches were made costing $348,000 apiece.
Boutique Director Samuel Marlard said he is continually “impressed” by the stock at South Coast Plaza and by the surrounding customer market.
“There are so many people [here] who can afford these pieces,” he said.
The center’s Van Cleef & Arpels store relocated late last year to take advantage of a larger space next to Hermés. In October, Van Cleef & Arpels hosted the pop-up called Poetry of Time featuring several of its latest contemporary timepieces and a selection of jewelry for shoppers to view. Many of these pieces are designed “to tell stories,” according to brand representatives.
Other new watch stores include Breitling, Tudor, IWC Schaffhausen and Hublot. South Coast Plaza is already home to Patek Phillipe, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, Chopard, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Rolex, TAG Heuer, and A Lange & Söhne boutiques. A redesigned Rolex store, in collaboration with Tourneau, is also scheduled to open this year.
Home and Brand Rearrangements
Bloomingdale’s at South Coast Plaza is the largest location in the company’s portfolio outside New York City at 250,000 square feet.
The company has been renovating and upgrading its product assortment to better accommodate customer preferences, which of late have been more focused on brands than product, according to General Manager Preston Antonini.
To add more bespoke brands, “we’re focused on how we flex our space,” Antonini added.
He said that the upscale department store is making room for a more visual brand presence in the department store by carving out dedicated spaces to hold their product in one place — the store revamped a mini Louis Vuitton boutique on the second-floor last year and is currently in talks with other brands to build more. The Costa Mesa location is wrapping up renovations of its home department on the first floor and aims to complete the storewide updates by next year.
The Spectrum Adds Exclusive, Unique Stores
Another shopping center to recently add a few Orange County first-timers is the Irvine Spectrum Center.
Last year, the outdoor mall opened OC’s first Shake Shack quick-service restaurant as well as the county’s first Sweetgreen location.
On the retail side, the region’s first FashionPhile, Roark and OluKai stores debuted as well.
While housing a larger variety of dining and retail tenants compared to more luxury exclusive centers in OC, the Spectrum has become known for its growing roster of entertainment spaces.
Irvine Spectrum was the center of a lot of buzz in 2023 during the blockbuster summer of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” films due to a special screen at the Regal movie theater. It was one of the only 19 IMAX theaters in the U.S. showing “Oppenheimer” filmed in the 70-millimeter format the director Christopher Nolan intended, and the center even did an encore run of the Oscar-winning movie.
Looking to next year, two new entertainment venues known as the Hijinx Hotel and Holey Moley, operated by Australia-based Funlab, will open at Spectrum marking the operator’s first-ever Hijinx Hotel in the U.S.
The space will offer four function rooms for groups, karaoke, two themed bars, 27 holes of mini-golf and 15 immersive challenge rooms across 34,129 square feet.
Irvine Spectrum will soon add the third OC location for Din Tai Fung as well.
Fashion Island Luxury Competition
Fashion Island, the Irvine Co.’s hub of luxury and flagship stores at the region’s second largest shopping center, is known for 150 stores and dining spots across 1.5 million leasable square feet.
It’s about to get a notable boost.
Set to open this year is the nearly 80,000-square-foot, four-level Restoration Hardware (RH) store, first announced in 2021. Its original location of luxury home furnishings is still open at Fashion Island until the project is completed.
Dubbed RH Newport Beach, the newer store model will be the company’s only design gallery in OC. Along with RH’s traditional offerings of furniture, lighting and textiles, the gallery will also offer professional services from an in-house interior design firm and atelier.
Located on the ocean-facing side of the shopping center, the store will have a hospitality element to it as well with plans for a glass-encased rooftop restaurant and wine bar. This store will be the third culinary spot for RH joining locations in Chicago and New York.
“This is a major win,” Newport Beach then Mayor Brad Avery said in a 2021 statement.
Fashion Island’s tenant portfolio is curated based on the lifestyle of its local customer base, according to executives. Irvine Co. appointed Gerard Widder, the former general manager of The Resort at Pelican Hill, as the center’s new GM in July succeeding Tanya Thomas, who transitioned out of the position in 2023.
A few recent additions exclusive to the Newport Beach center include Arhaus’ 16,000-square-foot showroom of furniture and home décor, womenswear retailer Veronica Beard, and the fashion brand Good American founded by Khloé Kardashian and Emma Grede.
