Hardly Changing the Chanel

Karen Rockwell and Sally Cain stood poised before the new Chanel boutique, waiting impatiently for the thick glass doors to swing open and admit the first customers.

“Look at that great jacket--oh, God,” said Rockwell, peering through the glass. She had driven from her home in Rolling Hills Estates on Monday morning to see the new Chanel store in South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

“We’ve been waiting a whole year for this,” said Cain, a Huntington Beach resident.

The opening of the Orange County store means that Chanel aficionados will no longer have to travel to the boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for those precious quilted handbags or silk-lined suits, the kind with gold chains sewn into the hems so they hang just so.

“Every time we travel, we look for the closest Chanel,” Cain said. “We’ve been to the boutiques in Paris, Monaco and Washington, D.C.”

The new boutique offers virtually everything found in those in Beverly Hills or Paris.

Rockwell and Cain, who wore Chanel earrings and toted Chanel handbags for the occasion, were among the first to enter the gleaming interiors.

Inside they found elegant mirrored walls with black lacquer trim that have been duplicated in Chanel boutiques worldwide. A pale apricot-colored carpet cushioned customers’ feet, while spotlights shone down on them from above.

Sales clerks, all impeccably dressed in their Chanel uniforms, stood behind the spotless glass counters. A hostess in a white apron brought out orange juice on a tray.

Within minutes, 20 or so customers had fanned out among the high-gloss displays of artfully arranged merchandise and an occasional keg-size perfume bottle. One customer already inhabited a plush dressing room with walls covered in beige suede, while a saleswoman hurried in and out with wool jackets and cashmere sweaters.

Rockwell, who quickly singled out a black satin hair bow to add to her Chanel accessories, said the new boutique compares favorably to others she has visited.

“I love it,” she said. “It’s smaller than some, but it’s a really well-stocked store.”

Some customers came not to shop but to ogle the boutique.

“I was anxious to be here, to be one of the first ones in the store. I’ve studied the evolution of apparel and (Coco) Chanel has always been one of my favorite designers,” said Bernadette Granados of Newport Beach, a graduate of a fashion design school who seemed content just to wander around the boutique.

“I’ve followed Chanel’s story--she started out in hats,” said Granados, who wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with gold trim and a red jacket and shorts ensemble.

“Chanel has a clean look--it will always be in style,” she said.

Many shoppers had never seen the inside of a Chanel boutique.

“I’ve known the name Chanel forever,” said Irma Alt, a 70-ish resident of Santa Ana. “I’ve never been in one of the stores. It’s very classy, very rich-looking. Some of the styles don’t appeal to someone my age, but they do have something for everyone.”

The boutique stocks a broad assortment of the entire Chanel collection, including the ready-to-wear collection designed by Karl Lagerfeld, an array of quilted leather handbags, long gold chains studded with faux pearls and gems, and Chanel’s line of shoes, belts, watches and skin-care products.

Chanel’s fall line features velvet jackets in rich jewel tones such as purple and red with black velvet trim on the pockets and cuffs for $2,140, coupled with a short velvet skirt with a chain detail bordering the hem for $860.

There’s a red wool coat-style dress with a black velvet collar and gold buttons for $2,390, or a quilted silk parka with black satin trim and gold buttons, for about $2,800.

Chanel suits start at about $2,000, yet even at those prices the competition for an especially hot style can be intense, attracting long waiting lists of buyers.

The new boutique has 3,600 square feet of selling space, making it the third largest Chanel store. It’s the 11th boutique in the country, and the first to be placed in a mall.

“We’ve been looking for a second Southern California location for two or three years,” said Barbara Cirkva, senior vice president of the fashion division for Chanel Inc. in New York City.

“Because of Orange County’s super development and growth, we thought this was the place we should be. The boutique works in this mall because South Coast Plaza is really a city in itself.”

To fit into the mall, designers had to create a single-story boutique. Other Chanel stores on the U.S. mainland have two or three stories.

A few Chanel veterans said they missed the boutique’s famous mirrored stairway. Copies of the stairway in the original Paris store on Rue Cambon have become a fixture of Chanel boutiques worldwide.

Still, Chanel has never occupied such a huge space on one floor, according to Cirkva, and the new boutique lacks none of Chanel’s distinctive style.

“Once you walk in, you feel you’re in that environment and look Chanel created,” she said.