Restaurant Marin, an upscale diner where everything from layered cakes to poached eggs was cooked in a wood-burning oven, has closed.

The restaurant, a sister concept to the wildly popular Arc restaurant at South Coast Collection, is relocating early next year to Newport Beach.

Owners Noah and Marín Howarth Von Blöm, who are not shy about taking risks with their restaurants, said Restaurant Marin had a good following at breakfast and brunch. But when it came to dinner, the modern diner menu of steak frites, meatloaf and roasted chicken, didn’t attract as many customers.

“It became a breakfast spot,” Marín said in a phone interview.

And a breakfast-only crowd doesn’t pay the rent at SoCo, a modern lifestyle shopping center in Costa Mesa.

So the husband-and-wife culinary team decided to pivot.

They closed the elegant diner, next door to Arc, on Monday, Nov. 13 and began remodeling it.  It will become Arc Wood-Fired Pizza.

Marin, who designs all of their restaurants, said she hopes to open early next week. She is repurposing the diner’s blue booths to create a long banquette in the small dining room. This will accommodate large parties, a feature lacking at Arc.

A wall has been knocked out to connect the pizza restaurant with Arc. When it opens, it will have about 40 seats, about 10 more than Restaurant Marin.

While the menu is not set, Chef Noah plans to serve about 8 to 10 hand-tossed pizzas, cocktails and salads. Though the two restaurants are connected, Marin said the experience at each restaurant will be different. But, if someone sits at the pizza joint and wants to order Arc’s famed wedge salad, she won’t deny them.

As for Restaurant Marin, fans of the oversized breakfast sandwich, layered cakes and pies will find a tweaked version of the concept at Arc Butcher & Baker in Newport Beach.

The couple has been planning to open a butcher shop and bakery at 417 30th St. for months. The 2,200-square-foot shop will have a “massive wood-burning oven” for baking loaves of brioche, cakes, cookies, pies and pastries, Marin said.

The other part of the space is a butcher counter, where customers can buy the same hand-butchered meats found at Arc.

“You can literally get Arc at home,” Marin said.

When it was clear that Restaurant Marin wasn’t working at SoCo, the Von Blöms decided they could relocate Restaurant Marin to Butcher & Baker. Initially, it was going to have a retail section. That’s been scrapped to make room for breakfast seating. Diners will order from a counter making it a more casual and approachable all-day breakfast spot, she said.

The 30-seat restaurant, butcher and bakery also will sell fried chicken sandwiches from a walk-up ordering window at the back of the shop.

Marin said she and Noah hope to open Butcher & Bakery by early 2018.

“It’s in the heart of the peninsula. For us, we’re really excited about the possibilities down there,” Marin said.

Restaurant Marin has been a rough experiment for the dynamic culinary couple since it opened in spring 2016.

When they announced plans for the diner, they shocked the local restaurant community with a European-style service, which eliminated tipping and raised menu prices to offset higher wages paid to employees. They also extended the experiment to Arc.

The Von Blöms felt they were taking the bull by the horns by raising wages to $15 an hour – well ahead of the 2022 state mandate. But the experiment failed. Diners balked at the menu’s sticker shock.

Two months later, the restaurants reverted to the lower prices and tipped service.

The Von Bloms also own The Guild Club, a members-only restaurant at SoCo.

Etro re-created an Eastern wonderland for pre-fall. The brand’s signature luxury nomadic spirit was given added charm via Far East iconography, echoed in the collection’s mix of graphics and patterns.
Tapestries, chinosoiries, textiles and wallpapers from the Eastern world at large inspired both the floral and graphic prints and the jacquard motifs. Kimono-like robe coats came in opulent brocades trimmed with mink fur, while asymmetric draped dresses were realized in lightweight textured silk.
The decorative attitude of the lineup, enhanced by the rich color palette, was balanced by sophisticated city staples injected with a subtle Seventies vibe. These included an orange peacoat worn with denim pants featuring a beaded side decor, as well as a pajama set in a joyful and colorful floral print matched with a printed sports bra, which introduced a touch of contemporary athleticism.

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MCM continues to ramp up its presence in the U.S. The Seoul-based, German-born accessories label has launched a holiday video campaign geared at young consumers.
The party scene campaign, called “The Give & Get Down,” features model and activist Barbie Ferreira, dance duo Les Twins and singer Kacy Hill, amongst others.
MCM America’s vice president of marketing and communications Rita Shukhman said of the endeavor: “Celebrating diversity, unity and friendship during this holiday season, we wanted to create a festive and lighthearted video that embodies a genuine sense of fun and giving amongst friends. With this campaign video, MCM tells its new school luxury story through fresh and playful self-expression. The music is upbeat, the crowd is cool, the gifts are chic and we learn in the end the best gift to give for the holidays is always the gift of good vibes.”
MCM, as previously reported by WWD, is expected to become a $1 billion brand by 2020. The company’s U.S. division, which relaunched in 2015, has crossed $100 million in annual sales and has risen to become the top-selling bag company at Neiman Marcus. The U.S. market is a key focus for the brand’s 2018 fiscal year.

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KLUTZES WELCOME: Dropel Labs, the in-house innovation hub of Dropel Fabrics, is trying to upgrade the basic cashmere T-shirt with a waterproof, stain-proof version.
Using hydrophobic technology and Grade A Mongolian cashmere, the company has created a $150 machine-washable version that is being sold directly to consumers online.
Having consulted with Dropel Fabrics’ founder Sim Gulati for the last year, Jordan French recruited Timo Weiland to help out with design and implementation. The men met as undergrads at Vanderbilt University more than 10 years ago. Before starting his own consultancy business Notability Partners, French put his engineering skills to work for a variety of companies and organizations, including NASA.
In a joint interview, French and Weiland mentioned how Miroslava Duma, founder and chief executive officer of the New York Fashion Tech Lab, is an investor in Dropal. And after a meeting in Moscow, Duma suggested to French that the stain-proof garment launch in Russia where consumers appreciate such advanced capabilities. Dropel Labs is selling women’s and men’s cashmere T-shirts in white, black and gray through its e-commerce site.
Finding new solutions in a priority for Weiland, who is part of the CFDA’s new 11-person innovation and technology committee. The group will be meeting quarterly

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Berlin State of Mind: In Louis Vuitton’s latest Fashion Eye series of city-centric photo books by fashion photographers, Peter Lindbergh’s Berlin volume takes you there. Even when he wasn’t. The primarily  black and white book, encompassing 57 images shot between 1989 and 2010, includes photographs lensed elsewhere, such as Paris portraits of Milla Jovovich or Sabisha Friedberg and Jessica Stamm, or New York shots of  Stephanie Seymour, all looking like the epitome of a Twenties Berlin flapper or dark cabaret star.
“Berlin is an inspiration for me, more than a city,” Lindbergh told WWD Monday night at the Berlin Fashion Eye book launch and signing at the Louis Vuitton flagship here. “I said I have so many photos of Berlin, but the inspiration was more important. I mean Milla (Jovovich) is simply Berlin!” As he commented to the booking buying crowd as the signing officially got underway, the book encompasses “everything that for me is Berlin.”
Much of that is seen through an atmospheric haze in black, white and far more than 50 shades of gray that calls to mind the expressionistic films of F.W. Murnau or menacing sharpness of Fritz Lang’s “M.” Others seem to have been generated by a time

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Francesca Leoni has been named to the newly created role of senior vice president, chief brand officer of the Michael Kors brand at Michael Kors Holdings Ltd., the global fashion luxury group.
She reports to John D. Idol, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer. Leoni will be joining Kors on Feb. 5.
Since 2010, Leoni has been the worldwide communications director at Valentino in Rome. In this role, she was responsible for the development and implementation of all global communications initiatives and events, including public relations and marketing. From 2005 to 2010, she was the worldwide p.r. and events director for Bulgari, and from 2000 to 2005, she was senior director, public relations and cultural events for Hermès. She has also held public relations roles at Malo.
“Francesca is an outstanding addition to our team,” said Michael Kors. “She has tremendous experience in the communications and marketing arena with luxury brands, and is the ideal choice to communicate the company’s vision, drive collaboration and inspire our global consumers.”
Idol added that he was excited to have someone with Leoni’s global expertise and business acumen with luxury brands join Kors. “She has an outstanding track record developing strategic communications and marketing in the fashion

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PARIS — The influence of Generation Z was hard to miss at the recent 10th anniversary edition of Denim Première Vision. The Nineties is still going strong, but experts also attributed a shift to a softer, lighter mood to the social-media-native generation. Directions like delicate, sophisticated, tone-on-tone jacquards in the season’s ruling sky blue shade are replacing the gritty vintage look that has been holding the denim category under its sway.
For these youngsters — who are between 11 and their early 20s, and came of age with selfies, Snapchat and YouTube — “Their own new vision of denim is fresh and contemporary,” said Marion Forêt, fashion product manager at Denim Première Vision.
Traffic at the three-day event — held Nov. 14 to 16 at the Paris Event Center — was stable, with around 66 percent of the 2,000 visitors hailing from abroad.
The next edition — set to run May 23 and 24 — will mark a changing of venue to Paris’ Parc Floral, skimming off a day.
“To this generation, vintage is the Nineties — an era like the Sixties is pre-historic, it doesn’t mean anything. Vintage is Nineties hip-hop, rave parties, the beginning of electronic music, skateboarding baggies, the beginning of Supreme

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Sky features several permanent pieces by Kusama and a 10,000-square-foot art gallery with rotating exhibits.

Rosetti Superyachts’ new 279-foot expedition yacht combines a proven offshore-supply-vessel design with luxury-yacht accommodations.

Björn Frantzén shut down his eponymous, two-Michelin-starred restaurant and moved it to embrace a more primal form of cooking.