This Orange County Store Has Quietly Defined American Style for 50 Years
I was familiar with the A’maree’s lore: A sprawling retail oasis in Newport Beach, California, built directly over the glimmering blue harbor; serotonin-boosting sunlight pouring through arched windows, bouncing from a gold sequin Bottega Veneta gown to an aspirational Dušan edit; three sisters running the boutique with friendly aplomb; and their mother, Nancy Brown—who founded the store 50 years ago—popping in to mingle with clients and dote on her daughters. But as I recently learned, visiting the if-you-know-you-know shop for the first time, the story of A’maree’s is about so much more than fancy clothes and the well-heeled Orange County women who can afford them.
“I’m from Brooklyn, New York,” Nancy tells me, adding that she was lured to Newport by “the sunshine and palm trees.” She is wearing a silk pants set in bright pistachio by Zimbabwe-born L.A.-based designer Peter Cohen, and her three daughters—Apryl Schaefer, Dawn Klohs, and Denise Schaefer—sit on the curved cream couch next to her.
Before sitting down with the women, I quietly roam the boutique. I take in a selection of woven Alaïa flats before being distracted by a Jules Ten Velde ribbon dress. I prefer skirts to pants, but thumbing through a rack of colorful pieces by Gabriela Hearst, Issey Miyake, Dries Van Noten, I’m halted by a pair of suede aquamarine Stouls trousers and think, I’d wear these. Walking the length of the store, past a glass case of shimmering Coady Cuhla diamond necklaces and under a custom Murano glass chandelier by Lucien Pellat Finet, I notice a pebble leather Valextra bag. I’ve never seen one with a mother-of-pearl closure, but that makes sense once I open it. Stamped inside are these words:
Nancy never dreamed of owning a store—much less one that a renowned Italian leather goods brand would craft limited-edition bags for if she simply asked. But we can rarely predict how life will unfold.
“When I married I was a homemaker, and I absolutely adored having three girls,” says Nancy, her passion for motherhood palpable. “I made them clothes, I decorated the house, I upholstered the furniture, I made the curtains… [and] it was really a dream for me.” Not one that would last forever, though. “Unfortunately I got a divorce. The divorce made me have zero; I had no child support, no alimony and no house.” But she did have “a wonderful, wonderful friend” named Ann Marie Hirsch, who purchased a storefront in a local strip center in 1976.
“She wanted a business but she didn’t want to work,” says Nancy. “It was a wonderful relationship because I could do whatever I wanted.” They named the store A’maree’s—a play on both Ann Marie and amare, which means “to love” in Italian—and filled it with classic American womenswear by Victor Costa, J.G. Hook, and Albert Nipon. Nancy was making $500 a week, and Apryl, Dawn, and Denise—who were 11, 13, and 15 at the time—would come by after school to help unpack boxes and steam garments. If Nancy needed to take one of them to the dentist or pick another one up from a practice, she would ask whoever was shopping to keep an eye on the place. She worked at A’maree’s Monday through Saturday, and on Sunday, she baked chocolate chip cookies. She served them in the store on an English platter alongside a carafe of wine. “Ladies would come in and go, ‘I only want a little glass of wine and a cookie, but I'm not buying anything,’” Nancy remembers. “And then as they left writing a check for $2,000, they'd go, ‘Damnit!’"
A year after the store opened, TWA airline captain Floyd Brown walked in to buy a dress for his daughter. “We got married in 1980,” says Nancy. Prior to her first marriage, Nancy wanted to be a flight attendant. Instead, “I got to marry the captain and fly first class,” she says. “And then I had great clothes. It was like a dream made in heaven.” That dream was amplified when Nancy bought out Hirsch to assume full ownership of A’maree’s.
During the store’s infancy, Nancy and her daughters sourced the majority of its collections during market weeks in L.A. and Dallas. “Then we stepped out big time and started going to New York,” says Nancy. While the sisters were always asked to sit in the back during appointments to make room for buyers, they weren’t shy about asking questions once the models appeared.
“If we got that in navy, what would the buttons look like?”
Often, the same person who asked Apryl, Dawn, and Denise to move to the back would approach Nancy and say, “Would you bring your girls back up again?”
That curiosity never waned, which explains why the women, now 61, 63, and 65, have never had any other jobs besides their roles at A’maree’s. “I started out of desperation, but they continued out of passion,” Nancy says.
“I've always been into numbers,” says Apryl. “I do all the paperwork: I’m in the office all the time.” I suspect this before she tells me. The lone blonde among her brunette mother and sisters, she’s poised and affable, but happy to let others do the talking, opting to nod and smile in agreement through much of the conversation instead of interjecting.
“I do the buying with Dawn, and I come in every day and curate the store,” says Denise. “It's an all-day-long, every day job, because there are a lot of moving parts. We have 100-plus collections, so there’s a domino effect.” (If the Rupert Sanderson slingbacks move to one surface, the Cecilie Bahnsen rack may have to shift as well.) In 2010, A’maree’s moved into the 8,300-square-foot space it occupies today, which was once the Stuft Shirt restaurant, designed by renowned architects Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey. Instead of doing a complete gut renovation, they kept much of the kitchen intact, using it to display homewares by Astier de Villatte, Échapper, and Julius; to chill the beverages they offer clients (sparkling water? still water? Diet Coke? Sprite?); and for chefs to use when they host parties, like the one taking place a few days after my visit to celebrate the store’s 50th anniversary and Nancy’s 87th birthday. Despite all that fills the boutique, “I’m always trying to make open space,” says Denise. “I think that’s such a luxury, seeing space instead of just a lot of product.”
From the time I arrive until I leave, the only time I see Denise sitting still is for this interview. Otherwise, she is rearranging something, assisting clients in the dressing room, or checking on the boutique’s exterior landscaping. This is all done with calmness and ease, several garments hanging over her forearm at all times.
“It's a big, big job, keeping the collections fresh and curating them the way that you want to see them on your floor,” Dawn says of her efforts with Denise. That curation has become increasingly European over the years, though their first trip to source outside of the States wasn’t strategically planned. “I was at a raffle in high school and they were selling tickets to La Scala,” says Dawn. “I thought it was La Scala in New York or a restaurant in LA.” She won the raffle, walking away with tickets to Milan’s famed opera house Teatro alla Scala. With Brown’s job allowing the family to fly all over the world, the sisters and their mother took their first buying trip to Milan around 1980.
“We really got into Italian luxury,” says Dawn of their early European buy. “We started carrying Brunello Cucinelli, Loro Piana, Prada, Etro, and Marni. I think we were Loro Piana's second client to carry the collection when they became a vertical company.” Naturally, trips to Paris came next, where, in addition to buying from French houses, they started to pick up the Japanese brands that showed their collections there too.
“It was such a different time,” says Denise, a wistfulness in her voice as she and her sisters recall meeting Karl Lagerfeld when he was still creative director at Chloé, and customizing their orders with Christian Louboutin. “He would sit on the floor with you [and] you'd pick your stitching, you’d pick your sole, you’d pick your heel,” says Dawn. “Every story would curate the collection completely differently.”
After befriending Azzedine Alaïa one season, they often stayed with him and his partner Christopher von Weyhe at the couple’s Paris home, enjoying coffee in the morning and Russian vodka at night. “We really have had almost every luxury brand that there is except for Vuitton, Goyard and Chanel,” says Dawn, namechecking three houses that, outside of their own retail stores, only sell through shop-in-shops at a handful of department stores.
When A’maree’s was still relatively new, most high-end brands didn’t have boutiques in every city and international airport, and no one could shop online or buy an entire wardrobe on a cell phone. While nearby shopping destinations Fashion Island and South Coast Plaza predate A’maree’s by a decade, they’re increasingly keen on stocking “the hottest, best, newest,” says Denise. This is all hard to compete with—so A’maree’s doesn’t try to.
“The last couple years we've let go of so many of the big names, and we're really, really loving collections that are really special, hard to find, more curated, more evergreen, and hold their value longer,” says Dawn. Among them is Daniela Gregis, known for lightweight, one-size pieces in washed cotton and linen. “It’s really a cult,” jokes Denise of the women who clamor for the Italian designs. The sisters share this while both wearing Duchamp—Dawn a navy knit turtleneck dress and Denise a white cotton shirt dress. “We championed him for years and years, and we buy a lot; it’s a big buy,” says Denise.
Apryl, meanwhile, is dressed in white muslin separates by Transit, a label A’maree’s has carried for 40 years. Like the late Mr. Alaïa, many of the designers they work with have become close friends—family, even. Nancy points to a mannequin draped in a white, two-layer blouse dress by Peter Cohen—a special piece made for her upcoming birthday. And when Denise mentions Rabih Kayrouz, Dawn chimes in to say, “He’s like our brother.”
The relationships are obviously meaningful to the women; I presume they are to the designers as well. “A lot of designers really want to be in the store,” I say.
“Everybody wants to be in the store,” Nancy confirms. So much so that Dawn and Denise no longer attend fashion shows, only presentations and appointments at studios and showrooms.
“It's very uncomfortable,” says Dawn of being at a runway show. “You can't even sit down to look at a collection because everyone's behind you waiting to pull you to where they are. “But as good buyers, it's really important to see what's out there. Sometimes you come upon something that you're so happy you found and said yes to. But we have to nicely say no to a lot of things; we just have to really stick to what feels right for us.”
Three years ago, that feeling struck when Dawn and Denise met New York-based Ashlyn designer Ashlynn Park. “From the beginning we intentionally focused on introducing the brand to respected luxury retailers,” Park tells me over the phone. “A’maree’s is one of the most influential independently-owned specialty boutiques—not only in the U.S., but globally.” Following a showroom appointment in Paris to view the pre-spring 2024 collection, Dawn and Denise placed an order. “It was like a dream,” says Park. Launched in 2020, Ashlyn doesn’t have the name recognition as brands like The Row—the top-selling label at A’maree’s—but “the quality, the execution, and the draping are very unique and special,” says Park. The boutique mostly stocks her airy spring pieces, given the O.C. weather and what A’maree’s knows their clients will be drawn to.
“I think a big problem with the department stores is that a lot of the buyers, they don't really have an idea who's coming in,” says Dawn.
When Nancy first opened the store, she made it a point to get to know her clients well—where they worked, where they traveled, what labels, fabrics, and prints they were partial to. “When things would come in, we'd call them and go, ‘you have to see this new line,’” she says. “And they would. They were very loyal to us.”
“We still have some of these clients,” Dawn says, adding that they continue to keep them on speed dial. “They always tell us that what they bought in our store, they keep the longest or still have. They still remember the first thing they bought. The memories are quite incredible. We now have the grandchildren that come in.”
Luxury shoppers from Chicago, New York, and Texas account for a sizable portion of the boutique’s clientele, as do a number of international clients, many from Europe and the Middle East. But the majority of the women walking through the door, some as often as three times a week, are local to Southern California.
Barbara Grimm-Marshall first stepped into A’maree’s in 1978 as a young newlywed in law school. “I wasn’t the shopper that I am today,” she shares on a call. But as her family’s agricultural business Grimmway Farms expanded, she found herself visiting more and more often. “In the last 35 years, I’ve become a regular, and I don’t really shop anywhere else.”
Seventy-three-year-old Grimm-Marshall primarily lives in Bakersfield, but also has a home on Balboa Island, just minutes away from A’maree’s. She loves the clothes, but also the experience. “It’s such an incredible place,” she says. “You could go in there with a suitcase and say, ‘I'm going to Paris for a week and I have nothing,’ and walk with everything you need—and have just the best time putting it all together.”
Nancy’s daughters will continue to create this experience for the foreseeable future. Denise does not have children and Apryl’s kids have worked at the store in the past but have since pursued other careers.
“I have a son who worked here for maybe a year,” says Dawn.
“And doesn’t ever want to work in retail again!” insists Nancy.
The A’maree’s matriarch retired at 60; she is confident that the business is in good hands. “They know how to travel, they know where to go, they know what to buy,” she says of Apryl, Dawn, and Denise. “I just come in and bring them delicious homemade muffins. And hugs—lots of hugs.”