Three months ago, Vancouver-based clothing company Aritzia announced that it was bringing its women’s-only fashions to Quebec and opening three unique stores in Montreal. Today is the big day, with new locations welcoming shoppers at the Eaton Centre, Carrefour Laval and Fairview Pointe Claire. Yesterday, I got a sneak shopping peek at the downtown Aritzia and I was totally smitten with the concept. Walnut walls, modern globe chandeliers and killer designer changing rooms are just part of the trendy design of the downtown store.
Sara, one of the Vancouver Aritzia misses that I met at the store, mentioned that each store is designed differently to reflect the neighbourhood or area where it is located. That philosophy also goes into the inspiration behind the clothing: Aritzia designs and produces the majority of the fashions you’ll find, under the guise of about six different in-house labels (Wilfred, TNA, Babaton, Talula, Wilfred Free, La Notte). Each label is designed to appeal to a certain type of woman, whether she’s a career woman who likes to take her office style straight to a 5 à 7, a hip young thing with a penchant for animal print and graphic tees, or even an I-just-want-to-be comfy-in-my-jeans-and-sweater kind of woman.
I personally love how a lot of the names of the clothes recall favourite Canadian or Montreal places, such as Banff, for a lady lumberjack shirt, or better yet Mont Royal, Beaubien and Concordia. It’s the perfect way to say, “Hey, we like your style and we hope you’ll like ours.” No problem, Aritzia, I think Montrealers of all walks of life will be happy to shop your styles!
Check out one of my Artizia finds in my outfit post here.
Artizia
705 Ste-Catherine St. W.
