Published November 1, 2026
NEWPORT BEACH | AROUND NEWPORT | NOVEMBER 1, 2026
On Sept. 9, 1967, Newport Beach welcomed a new kind of shopping center—and apparently treated the opening like a night on the town.
Fashion Island’s grand opening was a charity gala that drew about 18,000 people. In the black-and-white photographs from that evening, women wear cocktail dresses and bouffant hairstyles; men show up in suits and skinny ties. Even the Santa Ana High School Saints Marching Band was on hand, waiting to play. For one night, a trip to the mall called for more planning than finding a parking space.
The setting was new, too. Fashion Island opened as an outdoor shopping center at Newport Center, with four department-store anchors: Buffums, The Broadway, Robinson’s and J.C. Penney. It also had 52 specialty shops and restaurants including Bob Burns and the Velvet Turtle. The original plan made shopping a stroll between buildings and plazas, instead of a march through one enclosed mall.
The scale was ambitious for a city still changing around it. The Newport Beach Daily Pilot had reported during construction that the 75-acre project was expected to cost $20 million. Its opening offered a glimpse of the city’s next chapter: a growing Newport with a new commercial center on the hill, and an evening’s worth of people eager to see it.
Fashion Island has changed considerably since then, but the opening-night pictures preserve a small, vivid detail: people dressed for the occasion. The mall had arrived, and Newport showed up ready to celebrate.
Historical note: Fashion Island’s official timeline and later accounts give Sept. 9 as the opening date; an earlier construction-era Daily Pilot article had projected Sept. 11.
Sources
- Fashion Island historical timeline
- Los Angeles Times/Daily Pilot, 2017
- Orange County Archives photo context, via O.C. History Roundup
- Newport Beach Daily Pilot, Nov. 30, 1966
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