South Coast Plaza

In the decades she spent honing her craft, Doris Payne employed classic elegance, refined taste, Southern charm and a sleight of hand that could earn the envy of a talented magician. Like the best illusionists, she had a knack for making things disappear. Payne's life as an international jewel thief is the subject of an upcoming movie, "Who Is Doris Payne?" starring Halle Berry. But given the latest events in Orange County, the filmmakers may want to consider a new ending.

Location: 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa, at the 405 Freeway and Bristol Street. Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mon.-Fri.; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sat.; 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sun. Known for: The largest shopping center in California, South Coast Plaza is the Rodeo Drive of the O.C., with nearly every luxury brand in the universe under one roof. The mall has 250 boutiques and 30 restaurants. What you'll find: Almost everything you could ever want or need. Anchor stores are Bloomingdale's (the best one in Southern California)

About 1,000 guests kicked in $30 each Wednesday evening to nosh and listen to music while ogling fine furnishings at the grand opening of Crate & Barrel's new digs at South Coast Plaza. The event was a benefit for Friends of Mission San Juan Capistrano, a support group that raises funds for the historic mission.

Actress Eva Mendes, clad in lavender Dior, lingered after the ribbon-snipping ceremony at the newly renovated Christian Dior boutique in South Coast Plaza, chatting with guests at the cocktail reception Sept. 1 about, among other things, her admiration for Dior designer John Galliano. "It's the age of stylists, when nobody wants to take risks," Mendes said. "Galliano is out of the box. The difficulty for me is narrowing down the selections to choose what I want to wear. " Top company executives traveled from Paris and New York for the store-opening celebration and included Sidney Toledano, president and chief executive of Christian Dior Couture; and Pamela Baxter, president of Christian Dior Inc. They welcomed more than 150 party-goers who came to show their support for the Dream Guild of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation , which received a portion of sales related to the opening.

Your recent editorial "South Coast Plaza Turns 20" is right on the money. As a male teen-ager, I hate to go shopping. But if I have to, I will go to South Coast Plaza. It has stores and boutiques providing almost everything. Its location and many shops make shopping fun and easy. It is no surprise that shoppers from San Francisco or San Diego once in a while want to make a trip to Costa Mesa just to check out South Coast Plaza. This makes little Orange County very big. THI PHAM Huntington Beach

A new contestant is about to enter Orange County's designer derby. Louis Vuitton U.S.A. Inc., one of the premier names in designer luggage and handbags, plans to open a South Coast Plaza store in November--just a year after rival Gucci Shops Inc. opened its doors at the same mall. The addition of the upscale store signals that South Coast Plaza developer Henry Segerstrom is continuing his drive to turn a wing of the center into a sort of Rodeo Drive South.

South Coast Plaza has published a drawing showing how a long-awaited pedestrian bridge will sweep over Bear Street to connect the former Crystal Court with the plaza itself. The 611-foot bridge will stretch from South Coast Plaza's second level near Macy's main store westward over the parking structure to near the center of what's been known as Crystal Court.

They are the most renowned shopping destinations in the nation: Madison Avenue, Rodeo Drive, Palm Beach and . . . Costa Mesa? You bet, Costa Mesa--home to South Coast Plaza, one of the most successful shopping malls in the country. Starting next month, the retail center will be one of eight shopping meccas featured in a national advertising campaign by Visa USA.

Tiffany & Co., seeking to expand its presence in Orange County, has filed a lawsuit against South Coast Plaza, claiming the mall prevented the tony New York jeweler from opening a store at Mission Viejo Mall, which is undergoing a $150-million renovation in a move to position itself as an upscale shopping center in the burgeoning southern part of the county.

L.A.'s Festival of New American Musicals closed its third season Aug. 21 with a tuneful fundraiser, billed as a birthday party for Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown, of "Parade," "13," "Songs for a New World" and "Last Five Years. " "For what it's worth, my birthday was in June," he said, declaring it a gift to be able to play favorites from his own musicals, which he did in the backyard garden of Noelle and Tom Hicks' Brentwood home. Joining him to perform were Adam Pascal of "Rent," Lara Pulver of "True Blood," Nita Whitaker of "Star Search," Graham Phillips of "The Good Wife" and "The Theater Geeks of America," a collection of teenagers who perform gratis for charitable causes.

In the decades she spent honing her craft, Doris Payne employed classic elegance, refined taste, Southern charm and a sleight of hand that could earn the envy of a talented magician. Like the best illusionists, she had a knack for making things disappear. Payne's life as an international jewel thief is the subject of an upcoming movie, "Who Is Doris Payne?" starring Halle Berry. But given the latest events in Orange County, the filmmakers may want to consider a new ending.

In Henri Bendel's new accessory collection, the pièce de résistance is a travel tote dubbed disturbed stripe. The name could be a metaphor for the iconic New York store's recent campaign to increase relevance through reinvention. Accented with snakeskin-embossed Italian leather, the "disturbed" pattern shatters Bendel's familiar brown stripes (seen on hatboxes and shopping bags) like so many Humpty Dumptys and then fits the pieces haphazardly back together again. Traditionalists may view "corrupting" this classic as blasphemy akin to adorning Tiffany's eggshell blue with pink polka dots.

They came already shod in Christian Louboutin. At home, they have dozens, even 100 pairs of the French designer's shoes, some encased in special walls in their closets. They are connoisseurs of his style quirks -- the voluptuous hidden platform, the signature red sole, the vertiginous heel. Few of his devotees wear them at less than 4 or 5 inches.

Yvonne Dutton's life was saved by a department store. When she was raising eight children on a meager budget supplemented by food stamps, the Huntington Beach woman didn't have the time or money to shop at Nordstrom. And things got even worse when her 37-year marriage ended in divorce. It was a time when most of her peers were contemplating their leisure years, yet Dutton found herself looking for a new career at age 60. It wasn't long before she found Nordstrom.

THE charcuterie on the wooden board in the center of the table is arranged as precisely as a Cezanne still-life. Fine slices of pink prosciutto are dropped like handkerchiefs. It's the excellent artisanal prosciutto Americano made from acorn-eating pigs by La Quercia in Iowa. Quarter-sized slices of Spanish chorizo streaked with paprika and crimson and white marbled salametto Toscano march across the board.

While a trendy Swedish retailer whose "cheap chic" clothes drew thousands of shoppers to Orange County on Thursday for the launch of not one, but two, stores in South Coast Plaza, Vanessa Mendoza was waiting at Irvine Spectrum Center for the next one to open today. No matter that she would be waiting for 22 1/2 hours.

Boutiques are opening so fast along Melrose Place that even their owners aren't able to keep up with them. Three months after fashion designer Carolina Herrera opened the West Coast flagship for her namesake collection, she and her daughter, Carolina, finally were able to visit it and another in Costa Mesa this week. On Monday, Mrs. Herrera and Carolina Jr.