Night Life: Boudoir at Coco de Ville
Bottle service is bubbling again in Los Angeles, recession be damned. Angelenos want luxury, and competition for clubland’s top 1% is heating up this summer.
Accordingly, the New York-based hospitality company the One Group is doubling down on its lone Los Angeles lounge, Coco De Ville, with a new name — Boudoir at Coco de Ville — and a new upscale concept. The growing nationwide company is committed to retaining its Champagne-sipping regulars in the West Hollywood area, who have no shortage of options for a big night out in L.A.
“People in Los Angeles are fickle,” says Emily Olsen, the One Group’s L.A.-based marketing director. “The fact that we waited two years to change says something about the space, when so many venues change or close within a year.”
Olsen should know. Dwindling customers forced the One Group to close another spot last summer, its late-night restaurant-lounge One Sunset.
Although the company may have stumbled with One Sunset, it has succeeded with Coco de Ville and its adjacent steakhouse, STK. Last year, according to Olsen, combined revenues at STK (a nightlife nexus in its own right) and the lounge on La Cienega’s restaurant row approached $10 million.
Playing to its strengths, the group opened a Miami edition of Coco earlier this year, and STK restaurants are scheduled to open soon in Las Vegas and Atlanta.
This week, the company is celebrating the re-launch of Coco, showing off the new décor to regulars — some of whom may find themselves on the wrong side of the velvet rope if they don’t respect the new dress code.
“We want to bring back glamour,” says Rusty Morrone, Coco’s general manager and sometimes doorman. “If somebody comes to the door who was a regular prior and is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, we’ll respectfully decline. We’re catering to people who fit the new upscale nature of the space.”
So what, exactly, makes Boudoir at Coco de Ville more upmarket than its previous incarnation, which once attracted weekend crowds of men clad in Ed Hardy T-shirts?
For starters, the entire space has been made over in regal gold and blue hues (gone are the hot pink, green, black and purple walls that once defined the intimate room) to become what One Group brass thinks might be Lady Coco’s Parisian apartment. The changes are mostly cosmetic — yet substantial enough to possibly lure customers from analogous nearby lounges such as Guys & Dolls and Trousdale.
Twin crystal chandeliers have been added, a faux fireplace flickers in the smoking annex, the bar has new oak details, antique distressed mirrors stare back at aspiring starlets, several gold dancing “cages” sit on the main floor and the DJ booth is now located at the center of the club (one of the first changes to Coco) — flanked by poles where patrons have already taken to gyrating as the hip-hop-heavy soundtrack heats up nightly.
At a late May preview party, artist Natalie Loveless deemed the scene worthy. “It used to feel more like a club. But now you feel like it’s more approachable,” she said.
Tina Blake, a clothing designer, echoed the sentiment: “I’ve always loved Coco. It’s as close to a lounge as you can get in a club.”
But not everyone was impressed.
Canadian Dee Olman said she’d experienced better in Toronto. “It’s nothing that I haven’t seen before,” she said, adding that the “music is good because the DJ is good-looking and from New York.”
Since it debuted in early 2008, Coco de Ville has attracted its fair share of celebrities known to E! News viewers ( Kellan Lutz, Kim Kardashian and Lance Bass are all familiar with the 2,800-square-foot room). But with the revamp, Olsen hopes to tap into the surfeit of celebrities who frequent STK steakhouse next door.
“You can read when a table is going to want to go somewhere. We are experts at identifying who is a good fit and we’ll invite them over [to Coco] so they feel like a welcome guest,” says Olsen, who notes that they’ll also send them the other way. “If someone is coming to Boudoir and they want to book a table there, we’ll ask if they want to eat at STK first.”
It’s a destination strategy that Olsen hopes will work as the lounge enters its third year.
“Coco de Ville has grown up,” she says.
Where: 755 N. La Cienega Blvd., L.A.
When: 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, closed Sundays through Tuesdays
Price: No cover
Info: (310) 659-3535; https://www.the1group.com
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