Viva Las Vegas: Chanel Rebuilds at The Wynn
“Las Vegas is roaring back,” said Joyce Green, general manager of the fashion division of Chanel Inc.
She expects that Chanel’s elevated retail experience at The Wynn Las Vegas resort and casino will capitalize on the city’s recovering tourism, with cases of COVID-19 on the decline nationally and travel restrictions loosening up. Chanel’s expanded, redesigned store inside The Wynn opens Thursday, with artistic director Virginie Viard’s fall collection.
“This is a full-scale expansion and renovation,” Green told WWD. “There is a complete representation of the world of Chanel.”
Discussing its unique features, Green said the store expanded to 8,000 from 5,000 square feet; took over some outdoor space with a private terrace overlooking the “Lake of Dreams” and a waterfall; has a pleated stone facade with gold inlay suggestive of Vegas’ glittery lifestyle; three entrances for fashion; fragrance and beauty, and watches and fine jewelry, and areas for cross-merchandising categories so shoppers understand right away the breadth of the Chanel assortment.
That mixed visual merchandising approach is getting incorporated into other Chanel boutiques being renovated and was brought to Chanel by Peter Marino, the New York-based architect and store designer who has a long history of collaborating with Chanel in the U.S. Marino not only designed the new Wynn store, which draws on Coco Chanel’s legendary Paris apartment, he selected the artwork in the space.
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“This location is significant in scale at almost 8,000 square feet,” Marino said in an email exchange. “We created three entrances, bringing clients in through fragrance and beauty, fine jewelry and ready-to-wear. The access points are then connected on the interior, which creates variety in the sequencing of the spaces. There are so many different categories of merchandise now, the trick is to integrate them in a fun and easy way so the client does not necessarily focus on differentiation but rather the total experience.”
Asked about materials used in the construction, Marino replied, “The sculptural pleated facade is composed mainly of white Neopariés contrasted by the black framed entrance for fragrance and beauty. We created a bold gesture [that] ensures visibility of the space from the interior of Wynn Las Vegas. The modern iconic language of the black and white facade is instantly recognizable as Chanel.
“The rich heritage of the brand is present within clean lines, considerations of proportion and a sense of color and texture,” Marino added. “There are unique pieces throughout including sculptural seating by Jack Eriksson made from blackened aluminum, a painting by Thomas Fougeirol inserted into a darkened bronze base to create a table in ready-to-wear, and custom artwork by Peter Dayton of the white camellias that Coco loved are in gold and black in the try-on rooms.
“Chanel is a unique combination French tradition and modernity combined,” Marino added. “Every store must be immediately identifiable as being a Chanel environment but also unique. Location plays a large and very important role in the store’s design, as does the profile of the shopper. A boutique that has a very local customer base will be slightly different than one whose shoppers are mostly tourists. Chanel is a brand that is able to maintain its distinct heritage while constantly allowing us to push the boundaries of its architecture and design forward.”
Green said it was most important that Chanel bolster its presence in The Wynn, located at 3131 South Las Vegas Boulevard, because the luxury brand has maintained “a very limited distribution for all of our categories” with boutiques at the Encore and Bellagio hotels and Neiman Marcus in Vegas.
“[Beyond Nevada], we don’t have distribution in some of the neighboring states. We are distributed in department stores in Arizona, but there is no distribution in New Mexico, Idaho and Utah,” Green said. Across the country, Chanel has only 23 stand-alone boutiques.
With Chanel, the importance of brick-and-mortar retail can not be underplayed since, as Green noted, the luxury brand has a policy of not selling online, with the exception of eyewear, fragrance and beauty.
“I believe the tactile experience of all of our categories is so important to the experience of Chanel,” Green said. “We have been investing a lot in our retail teams. We have people moving to Vegas. We are adding headcount. We strongly embrace and believe in the in-person, human experience. But we don’t open new boutiques very frequently. The last was in City Center in Washington, D.C., in July which was our first new one in 11 years.”
Despite the nation’s labor shortage, “Fortunately, we have had success in hiring and finding people for a variety of roles such as greeters, people working in very client-centric roles, people who speak different languages or with expertise in operations. We have been adding people to our retail operations throughout the year.”
