RETAIL

Smell of Success: More than a dozen shoppers were in line at the opening of the Chanel boutique at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa earlier this month The boutique is the 11th in the U.S. for the couturier that practically invented the pleated skirt and the collarless suit for women. The Costa Mesa store is only the second inside a shopping mall.

Arie Kopelman, Chanel Inc. president and chief executive, said his company negotiated for three years with South Coast Plaza developer Henry Segerstrom to find a space with enough presence for Chanel: 95 feet of store front in white Italian marble across from Tiffany & Co. in the mall’s Nordstrom wing.

“If we couldn’t do it the Chanel way,” Kopelman said, “we wouldn’t have come.”