yeg-yyz
New Member
They have somewhat renovated the NE corner and added a Hugo Boss section on the main floor fronting Queen St.
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vancouverguy_76
Active Member
I guess that means they'll keep some menswear on the main floor. I was wondering if they'd move menswear all upstairs, and keep the main floor for boutiques/accessories, and cosmetics/beauty. The atrium would make an excellent central feature to a collection of designer shops, not unlike KaDeWe in Berlin. http://www.stay-tuned-to-sw.de/world_of_swatch_kadewe_4.jpg (this atrium is surrounded by shops such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Tod's, Dior, Tiffany & Co, Bulgari, Cartier, etc.)
Skeezix
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Signs have started going up on some of the upper floors, with messages along the lines of "Building a Better Bay" or something to that effect. Still nothing on the ground floor, though, as far as I can tell.
The store has actually seemed relatively busy to me lately.
vancouverguy_76
Active Member
A salesman at the Vancouver store tells me that Holt Renfrew will no longer carry Polo Ralph Lauren for men, exclusively. Thus Polo stores will be opened at the Bay across Canada. The new Polo store in downtown Vancouver will have 5 staff just for that store. It will include a custom Polo interior.
Salesguy also said Hugo Boss shops would be rolled out in a few stores, and other designers are to follow.
Salesguy also said Hugo Boss shops would be rolled out in a few stores, and other designers are to follow.
officedweller
Senior Member
Side note: The Vancouver Bay's ground floor (the whole floor apparently) is slated to become the Olympic Superstore for all Olympic merchandise - not sure when the transformation will occur - (i.e. how far in advance) so either the main floor will be renovated for the Olympic Superstore or wait until afterwards. My guess is that the final renos will wait until after the Olympics (to better suit the final layout).
Matteo
New Member
The Bay Queen Street
I was walking through the Bay yesterday and noticed hoarding around the south end of the main escalators - perhaps this is the beginning of the YP renovations?
I was walking through the Bay yesterday and noticed hoarding around the south end of the main escalators - perhaps this is the beginning of the YP renovations?
syn
Senior Member
Canadian Olympic merchandise I'd assume?
If so it's going to be one of the ugliest retail spaces in the world
. The Bay has been a very poor successor to Roots.
deerparker
Active Member
HBC may return to Canadian hands
TheStar.com Business - 23 September 2009
Ownership of the Hudson's Bay Co., Canada's oldest retailer, could be returned to Canadians as soon as the first half of 2011 through a public stock offering, the current American owner of the company said today.
Richard Baker's company NRDC Equity Partners bought the chain in 2008.
Baker said NRDC, a New York based private equity firm, would remain involved in the Hudson's Bay after the initial public offering, both as an owner and operator.
He said no decisions have been made about how much of the company would be offered for sale to the public.
The offering could include all or part of the Hudson's Bay Co., which operates nearly 500 stores across Canada under the names the Bay, Zellers, Home Outfitters and Fields. The offering could even include a stake in Lord and Taylor, the Bay's sister department store chain in the U.S., Baker said.
Since acquiring the Hudson's Bay Co. last August, NRDC has ploughed $500 million into stores on both sides of the border and cut $400 million in expenses, he told an International Council of Shopping Centres conference in Toronto today.
By boosting the stores' performance, he said, the company will also increase the value of the real estate beneath them.
The company plans to begin experimenting with a variety of initiatives this year to boost sales and profits, he said.
Next Thursday, it will unveil the Olympic uniforms it has designed for Canadian athletes participating in the Vanoc 2010 winter games.
In mid-October, the Bay will open its newly expanded designer floor, called The Room.
TheStar.com Business - 23 September 2009
Ownership of the Hudson's Bay Co., Canada's oldest retailer, could be returned to Canadians as soon as the first half of 2011 through a public stock offering, the current American owner of the company said today.
Richard Baker's company NRDC Equity Partners bought the chain in 2008.
Baker said NRDC, a New York based private equity firm, would remain involved in the Hudson's Bay after the initial public offering, both as an owner and operator.
He said no decisions have been made about how much of the company would be offered for sale to the public.
The offering could include all or part of the Hudson's Bay Co., which operates nearly 500 stores across Canada under the names the Bay, Zellers, Home Outfitters and Fields. The offering could even include a stake in Lord and Taylor, the Bay's sister department store chain in the U.S., Baker said.
Since acquiring the Hudson's Bay Co. last August, NRDC has ploughed $500 million into stores on both sides of the border and cut $400 million in expenses, he told an International Council of Shopping Centres conference in Toronto today.
By boosting the stores' performance, he said, the company will also increase the value of the real estate beneath them.
The company plans to begin experimenting with a variety of initiatives this year to boost sales and profits, he said.
Next Thursday, it will unveil the Olympic uniforms it has designed for Canadian athletes participating in the Vanoc 2010 winter games.
In mid-October, the Bay will open its newly expanded designer floor, called The Room.
officedweller
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Skeezix
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The Bay goes high fashion
Antik Batik label's move to more refined look creates conundrum at Queen and Yonge
Toronto Star - Published On Thu Oct 15 2009
Thursday's unveiling of The Room, the Bay's revitalized den of designer goods that aims to restore fashion glory to the corner of Queen and Yonge, promises to be a grand reveal. There will be answers to questions both big – Whither the Bay? – and small – What's happening with Antik Batik?
A French label created by Gabriella Cortese, an Italian who resides in Paris and collaborates with artisans in India, Bali and Peru, Antik Batik has been around since 1992. That would be "a hundred years ago" to Suzanne Timmins who remembers buying the line in her former life at Holt Renfrew. These days fashion director of the Bay, Timmins picked up the collection for fall. "You can find something for $395," and she figured it could serve as entry level at The Room.
Synonymous with boho chic, a trend that may have peaked, Antik Batik still manages to hold on to its hipness. So it would also make itself at home in the Contemporary department, the next focal point in the renaissance of the Bay.
Then again, Antik Batik is moving in a more refined direction. This season, it will include a selection of cashmere pieces designed by Georgina Brandolini, a Brazilian-born countess who has been a muse to Valentino and an executive at Balmain. That sounds like The Room.
Suspense about where Antik Batik will hang at the Bay should be resolved Thursday. Meanwhile, there was the chance last month to satisfy curiosity about the collection and its creator when Cortese came to town for the Toronto International Film Festival.
For four years, she has been setting up a temporary showroom at the Cannes Film Festival. She decided to do the same thing at TIFF, where she won attention from Robin Wright Penn, Emily Blunt, Paz de la Huerta and Lisa Kudrow.
Celebrity followers already included Kate Moss, Vanessa Paradis, Lou Doillon, Chiara Mastroianni and Gwen Stefani. Ségolène Royal, who lost the French presidential race in 2007, and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who married the winner, have also worn Antik Batik.
Like Bruni-Sarkozy, Cortese, 44, comes from Turin. She had a proper bourgeois upbringing – no blue jeans – and developed a taste for liberty on summer holidays in Saint-Tropez. At 18, a student, she moved to Paris where she got a job as a dancer at the Crazy Horse, the famous cabaret, where she was known as Drama Tanagra and where costumes consisted of makeup and light.
Slipping into her vagabond shoes, Cortese embarked on a global gallivant that took her to Bali. There, she discovered fabric, printed according to the time-honoured batik process, which became the basis for her business.
Married to Marc Rioufol, an actor, with whom she has a 3-year-old son, Cortese today heads a company that, since an influx of capital last year, is bent on expansion. The brand, which also encompasses children's wear (sold in Toronto at Gretchen & Co.), is available at three Antik Batik shops in Paris and carried by more than a thousand accounts around the world. It is also featured online at net-a-porter .com.
Still, Cortese remains committed to the human values that handcrafted embellishment brings to a garment. Sequins and embroidery are sometimes played for flash, as in the barebacked column of gold spangles that travelled the red carpet at Cannes, but they are more usually featured on simple, easy pieces that avoid ethnographic exuberance. Even forays into the film festival circuit do not seem overly forward. To Cortese, they are merely a means to get people "talking about the brand in a nice way."
David Livingstone is a freelance fashion writer. Email: living david@gmail.com
Antik Batik label's move to more refined look creates conundrum at Queen and Yonge
Toronto Star - Published On Thu Oct 15 2009
Thursday's unveiling of The Room, the Bay's revitalized den of designer goods that aims to restore fashion glory to the corner of Queen and Yonge, promises to be a grand reveal. There will be answers to questions both big – Whither the Bay? – and small – What's happening with Antik Batik?
A French label created by Gabriella Cortese, an Italian who resides in Paris and collaborates with artisans in India, Bali and Peru, Antik Batik has been around since 1992. That would be "a hundred years ago" to Suzanne Timmins who remembers buying the line in her former life at Holt Renfrew. These days fashion director of the Bay, Timmins picked up the collection for fall. "You can find something for $395," and she figured it could serve as entry level at The Room.
Synonymous with boho chic, a trend that may have peaked, Antik Batik still manages to hold on to its hipness. So it would also make itself at home in the Contemporary department, the next focal point in the renaissance of the Bay.
Then again, Antik Batik is moving in a more refined direction. This season, it will include a selection of cashmere pieces designed by Georgina Brandolini, a Brazilian-born countess who has been a muse to Valentino and an executive at Balmain. That sounds like The Room.
Suspense about where Antik Batik will hang at the Bay should be resolved Thursday. Meanwhile, there was the chance last month to satisfy curiosity about the collection and its creator when Cortese came to town for the Toronto International Film Festival.
For four years, she has been setting up a temporary showroom at the Cannes Film Festival. She decided to do the same thing at TIFF, where she won attention from Robin Wright Penn, Emily Blunt, Paz de la Huerta and Lisa Kudrow.
Celebrity followers already included Kate Moss, Vanessa Paradis, Lou Doillon, Chiara Mastroianni and Gwen Stefani. Ségolène Royal, who lost the French presidential race in 2007, and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who married the winner, have also worn Antik Batik.
Like Bruni-Sarkozy, Cortese, 44, comes from Turin. She had a proper bourgeois upbringing – no blue jeans – and developed a taste for liberty on summer holidays in Saint-Tropez. At 18, a student, she moved to Paris where she got a job as a dancer at the Crazy Horse, the famous cabaret, where she was known as Drama Tanagra and where costumes consisted of makeup and light.
Slipping into her vagabond shoes, Cortese embarked on a global gallivant that took her to Bali. There, she discovered fabric, printed according to the time-honoured batik process, which became the basis for her business.
Married to Marc Rioufol, an actor, with whom she has a 3-year-old son, Cortese today heads a company that, since an influx of capital last year, is bent on expansion. The brand, which also encompasses children's wear (sold in Toronto at Gretchen & Co.), is available at three Antik Batik shops in Paris and carried by more than a thousand accounts around the world. It is also featured online at net-a-porter .com.
Still, Cortese remains committed to the human values that handcrafted embellishment brings to a garment. Sequins and embroidery are sometimes played for flash, as in the barebacked column of gold spangles that travelled the red carpet at Cannes, but they are more usually featured on simple, easy pieces that avoid ethnographic exuberance. Even forays into the film festival circuit do not seem overly forward. To Cortese, they are merely a means to get people "talking about the brand in a nice way."
David Livingstone is a freelance fashion writer. Email: living david@gmail.com
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The Room returns as the Bay adds luxury
Retailer restores a Toronto tradition as it tries to win customers with a page from Macy's and Bloomingdale's
Globe and Mail - Published on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009
Bonnie Brooks is brimming with pride as she shows off the latest fashions to arrive at the Bay: a $21,000 sequined royal-blue Balmain cocktail dress; a Proenza Schouler school satchel-style purple suede handbag for $3,295.
This is the new face of the Bay, but not all Bay stores are created equally.
Today, Ms. Brooks relaunches The Room, formerly known by the stodgier St. Regis Room moniker, as a vastly expanded space in the downtown Toronto flagship. But it's just part of the CEO's vision to revive the storied but tired department store chain.
She needs more than the high-fashion shopper to fulfill her mission. The majority of her shoppers are "pragmatists" who watch their budgets in these tough times but are ready to spend an average of $1,900 a year on clothing.
And so, Ms. Brooks, who arrived at the Bay just over a year ago, is borrowing a leaf from the book of U.S.-based Bloomingdale's with plans to roll out The Room as a luxury showcase at its key flagship stores - in this case Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Like her U.S. department-store counterparts, she will launch three other types of Bay stores with merchandise for "pragmatic" and even more cost-conscious "value" shoppers.
"That's the key to the work we're doing here - you can't paint Canada with one brush," said Ms. Brooks, dressed in fall-chic of an Antonio Berardi outfit (at The Room for $3,490).
"What works in Toronto isn't necessarily going to work in London or in Kitchener ... Before, we didn't have a range of products to differentiate our stores. Now that's changing."
Her task of transforming the Bay is daunting: Its productivity, an important measure in retail measured in sales per square foot, now stands at $165 and lags that of U.S.-based Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom - two of her models which generate close to $400 sales per square foot.
Now she thinks she can almost double the Bay's productivity to $300 per square foot in less than five years. Her blueprint for change includes focusing more than ever on fashion; replacing most of the brands with updated lines; creating different department-store models in different parts of the country; and dramatically scaling back - by half - the number of promotional sales at the stores.
The adjustments will bolster the Bay's $2.5-billion of annual sales by more than 30 per cent over five years, she predicted.
Elizabeth Evans is typical of the kind of customer that Ms. Brooks is trying to woo. Ms. Evans, in her 50s, shops mostly at specialty stores even though her office is close to the Bay and its main rival, Sears Canada. When she does head to the department stores, it's mainly to pick up cosmetics on their main floor.
"The challenge for the Bay is getting customers back into the stores," said Ms. Evans, director of Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Retail Management. "It's difficult when you're in the middle part of the market, which is where department stores traditionally have been."
The department stores have been losing business to specialty and discount chains for more than a decade, she said. According to market researcher NPD Group, department stores' sales in the $19.1-billion Canadian apparel industry dropped to 15.6 per cent in the year ended in June, 2009, from 17.6 per cent in 2007.
Ms. Brooks said she is already making headway at the Bay. The average customer purchase rose by $5 to $70 this year from 2008, she said. Sales in the key sections of women's wear, handbags and footwear gained 2 per cent to 5 per cent this fall from a year earlier, she said.
"We still have a lot of work to do," she added.
Part of the work is the $5.3-million refashioning of The Room by star design firm Yabu Pushelbelg: expanding its space by more than five-fold to 21,500 square feet and stocking 70 upscale brands, from about a dozen previously. She has tripled the number of staff to 25 and added a full-time concierge and VIP lounge. In the first year alone, she expects that The Room's sales will triple to $15-million. "It sends a new signal to our customers and to the marketplace."
But beyond adding The Room at two other flagships in the next two years, Ms. Brooks will focus on adding more moderately priced fashion lines to the stores. She has been helped by design houses that, during the recession, launched less expensive lines such as T Tahari by Elie Tahari and BCBGeneration by BCBG.
She has in mind four different types of stores to cater to various markets. They are the three urban flagships which will house The Room; three other flagships in Calgary, Ottawa and Winnipeg; high end suburban stores in such cities as Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver; and older stores.
"What we're building is a hybrid of the major brand dominance that Macy's has ... and the excitement of a Bloomingdale's," she said.
Retailer restores a Toronto tradition as it tries to win customers with a page from Macy's and Bloomingdale's
Globe and Mail - Published on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009
Bonnie Brooks is brimming with pride as she shows off the latest fashions to arrive at the Bay: a $21,000 sequined royal-blue Balmain cocktail dress; a Proenza Schouler school satchel-style purple suede handbag for $3,295.
This is the new face of the Bay, but not all Bay stores are created equally.
Today, Ms. Brooks relaunches The Room, formerly known by the stodgier St. Regis Room moniker, as a vastly expanded space in the downtown Toronto flagship. But it's just part of the CEO's vision to revive the storied but tired department store chain.
She needs more than the high-fashion shopper to fulfill her mission. The majority of her shoppers are "pragmatists" who watch their budgets in these tough times but are ready to spend an average of $1,900 a year on clothing.
And so, Ms. Brooks, who arrived at the Bay just over a year ago, is borrowing a leaf from the book of U.S.-based Bloomingdale's with plans to roll out The Room as a luxury showcase at its key flagship stores - in this case Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Like her U.S. department-store counterparts, she will launch three other types of Bay stores with merchandise for "pragmatic" and even more cost-conscious "value" shoppers.
"That's the key to the work we're doing here - you can't paint Canada with one brush," said Ms. Brooks, dressed in fall-chic of an Antonio Berardi outfit (at The Room for $3,490).
"What works in Toronto isn't necessarily going to work in London or in Kitchener ... Before, we didn't have a range of products to differentiate our stores. Now that's changing."
Her task of transforming the Bay is daunting: Its productivity, an important measure in retail measured in sales per square foot, now stands at $165 and lags that of U.S.-based Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom - two of her models which generate close to $400 sales per square foot.
Now she thinks she can almost double the Bay's productivity to $300 per square foot in less than five years. Her blueprint for change includes focusing more than ever on fashion; replacing most of the brands with updated lines; creating different department-store models in different parts of the country; and dramatically scaling back - by half - the number of promotional sales at the stores.
The adjustments will bolster the Bay's $2.5-billion of annual sales by more than 30 per cent over five years, she predicted.
Elizabeth Evans is typical of the kind of customer that Ms. Brooks is trying to woo. Ms. Evans, in her 50s, shops mostly at specialty stores even though her office is close to the Bay and its main rival, Sears Canada. When she does head to the department stores, it's mainly to pick up cosmetics on their main floor.
"The challenge for the Bay is getting customers back into the stores," said Ms. Evans, director of Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Retail Management. "It's difficult when you're in the middle part of the market, which is where department stores traditionally have been."
The department stores have been losing business to specialty and discount chains for more than a decade, she said. According to market researcher NPD Group, department stores' sales in the $19.1-billion Canadian apparel industry dropped to 15.6 per cent in the year ended in June, 2009, from 17.6 per cent in 2007.
Ms. Brooks said she is already making headway at the Bay. The average customer purchase rose by $5 to $70 this year from 2008, she said. Sales in the key sections of women's wear, handbags and footwear gained 2 per cent to 5 per cent this fall from a year earlier, she said.
"We still have a lot of work to do," she added.
Part of the work is the $5.3-million refashioning of The Room by star design firm Yabu Pushelbelg: expanding its space by more than five-fold to 21,500 square feet and stocking 70 upscale brands, from about a dozen previously. She has tripled the number of staff to 25 and added a full-time concierge and VIP lounge. In the first year alone, she expects that The Room's sales will triple to $15-million. "It sends a new signal to our customers and to the marketplace."
But beyond adding The Room at two other flagships in the next two years, Ms. Brooks will focus on adding more moderately priced fashion lines to the stores. She has been helped by design houses that, during the recession, launched less expensive lines such as T Tahari by Elie Tahari and BCBGeneration by BCBG.
She has in mind four different types of stores to cater to various markets. They are the three urban flagships which will house The Room; three other flagships in Calgary, Ottawa and Winnipeg; high end suburban stores in such cities as Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver; and older stores.
"What we're building is a hybrid of the major brand dominance that Macy's has ... and the excitement of a Bloomingdale's," she said.
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The Bay goes upscale in down cycle
Years of sliding sales prompt retailer to try a new kind of clientele
Toronto Star - Published On Thu Oct 15 2009
The Bay on Queen St. is taking a bold gamble by opening a newly renovated and massively expanded designer women's department Thursday at a time when unemployment in Toronto is just under 10 per cent.
From the $21,000 Balmain sequined dress to the $300 Tahari jackets, the dazzling designer floor, called The Room, is more than double its former size and features 40 new brands, including some European haute couture.
The decision to take the Bay upmarket while consumers are trading down has been controversial, but some experts say the chain had little choice after years of sliding sales and profits.
"They won't succeed by carrying on doing the same things they've been doing for the last decade," said John Williams of Toronto retail consulting firm J.C. Williams Group Ltd. "And their target market has got to be something that's middle- and upper-income. Wal-Mart, Zellers, Costco and Winners have a hammerlock on that lower end."
Bay president Bonnie Brooks defended the designer floor expansion saying, "We're not building this for today. We're building what I think is a proper foundation for Canada's leading department store."
Though The Room occupies just 5 per cent of the massive 1 million-square-foot Queen St. store, Brooks said she expects it will generate more than that percentage in sales, citing $15 million a year as the target. "It will help raise the average selling price per square foot, which is the name of the game."
The Room is unique to the Queen St. store but Brooks said she is adding more exclusive merchandise to all 92 Bay stores across the country in a bid to double sales to $300 per square foot, levels enjoyed by some U.S. department stores.
Designed by the internationally renowned Toronto firm Yabu Pushelberg, The Room was completed "under $200 a square foot," Brooks said, adding Saks Fifth Avenue spent $650 a square foot renovating the Third Floor at its flagship Manhattan store.
Years of sliding sales prompt retailer to try a new kind of clientele
Toronto Star - Published On Thu Oct 15 2009
The Bay on Queen St. is taking a bold gamble by opening a newly renovated and massively expanded designer women's department Thursday at a time when unemployment in Toronto is just under 10 per cent.
From the $21,000 Balmain sequined dress to the $300 Tahari jackets, the dazzling designer floor, called The Room, is more than double its former size and features 40 new brands, including some European haute couture.
The decision to take the Bay upmarket while consumers are trading down has been controversial, but some experts say the chain had little choice after years of sliding sales and profits.
"They won't succeed by carrying on doing the same things they've been doing for the last decade," said John Williams of Toronto retail consulting firm J.C. Williams Group Ltd. "And their target market has got to be something that's middle- and upper-income. Wal-Mart, Zellers, Costco and Winners have a hammerlock on that lower end."
Bay president Bonnie Brooks defended the designer floor expansion saying, "We're not building this for today. We're building what I think is a proper foundation for Canada's leading department store."
Though The Room occupies just 5 per cent of the massive 1 million-square-foot Queen St. store, Brooks said she expects it will generate more than that percentage in sales, citing $15 million a year as the target. "It will help raise the average selling price per square foot, which is the name of the game."
The Room is unique to the Queen St. store but Brooks said she is adding more exclusive merchandise to all 92 Bay stores across the country in a bid to double sales to $300 per square foot, levels enjoyed by some U.S. department stores.
Designed by the internationally renowned Toronto firm Yabu Pushelberg, The Room was completed "under $200 a square foot," Brooks said, adding Saks Fifth Avenue spent $650 a square foot renovating the Third Floor at its flagship Manhattan store.
Skeezix
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More Room for high fashion
Hoping to restore the designer section known as The Room to its former glory, the Bay's flagship store opens a newly renovated and massively expanded women's department
Toronto Star - Published On Thu Oct 15 2009
"I'm elated. I'm excited. All the e-words," said an exultant Bonnie Brooks, president and CEO of the Bay on Wednesday night as she welcomed 800 guests to the extraordinary, extravagant and elegant relaunch of The Room as a downtown fashion destination.
Invited on a walk-through earlier in the day, the press turned into lords and ladies gaga. Some were struck speechless; among those who could find words, reactions ranged from "exciting" to "incredibly exciting."
Suzanne Timmins, the Bay's fashion director, said, "It's beautiful clothes in a beautiful space" – as if that was all there was to it.
The Room, which is not a single defined area as its name might suggest, is a 21,500-square-foot suite of spaces that the interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg has made bright by opening windows that had long been sealed off.
The floor is pale, white walls are hand-painted with antler motifs (a lighthearted nod to the Bay's corporate crest), and there are often no walls at all. Instead, there's an airy divider strung with shiny acrylic blocks and another one made of polished stainless steel rectangles. Both lure customers to look beyond the merchandise that is immediately in front of them. Gazing at a perfectly plain Halston opera coat (collarless, belted, floor-length) in black cashmere, you might spy in the distance the fan-shaped pink ruffles that Bruno Frisoni calls shoes.
The stock at The Room will include almost 70 high-fashion labels, a mix of big international names such as Azzedine Alaia, John Galliano, and Sonia Rykiel and Canadian favourites such as Comrags, Lida Baday, Pink Tartan and Wayne Clark. Several lines are available nowhere else in town. Among those are Halston, Frisoni, Erdem, Christopher Kane, Proenza Schouler and Balmain.
Currently, Balmain's ready-to-wear collection is one of the hottest in the world. It's also one of the priciest. A little sequined dress goes for $21,000. An outrage to some, it's what Mary Milligan, a sales associate of 48 years, considers a challenge.
"It's my oxygen," says Milligan, "And it was Margery's oxygen, too."
Margery is Margery Steele, the Canadian retail legend who went to work for Simpson's (acquired by the Bay in 1979) in 1946, when The Room's annual fall show featured work by historic luminaries such as Lucien Lelong, Claire McCardell and Hardy Amies.
A buyer for The Room, starting in 1962, and its director from 1971 till 1998 when she retired (just months before she died of cancer), Steele was a small woman with big hair.
Capable of rapture, she was also in tune with reality. She shopped the showrooms of Europe, bearing in mind what her customers liked to wear and what their lives required them to own.
Brenda Emslie, managing director of The Room, remembered Steele fondly and praised Brooks.
"Bonnie," said Emslie, surveying the scene, "makes it real."
Hoping to restore the designer section known as The Room to its former glory, the Bay's flagship store opens a newly renovated and massively expanded women's department
Toronto Star - Published On Thu Oct 15 2009
"I'm elated. I'm excited. All the e-words," said an exultant Bonnie Brooks, president and CEO of the Bay on Wednesday night as she welcomed 800 guests to the extraordinary, extravagant and elegant relaunch of The Room as a downtown fashion destination.
Invited on a walk-through earlier in the day, the press turned into lords and ladies gaga. Some were struck speechless; among those who could find words, reactions ranged from "exciting" to "incredibly exciting."
Suzanne Timmins, the Bay's fashion director, said, "It's beautiful clothes in a beautiful space" – as if that was all there was to it.
The Room, which is not a single defined area as its name might suggest, is a 21,500-square-foot suite of spaces that the interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg has made bright by opening windows that had long been sealed off.
The floor is pale, white walls are hand-painted with antler motifs (a lighthearted nod to the Bay's corporate crest), and there are often no walls at all. Instead, there's an airy divider strung with shiny acrylic blocks and another one made of polished stainless steel rectangles. Both lure customers to look beyond the merchandise that is immediately in front of them. Gazing at a perfectly plain Halston opera coat (collarless, belted, floor-length) in black cashmere, you might spy in the distance the fan-shaped pink ruffles that Bruno Frisoni calls shoes.
The stock at The Room will include almost 70 high-fashion labels, a mix of big international names such as Azzedine Alaia, John Galliano, and Sonia Rykiel and Canadian favourites such as Comrags, Lida Baday, Pink Tartan and Wayne Clark. Several lines are available nowhere else in town. Among those are Halston, Frisoni, Erdem, Christopher Kane, Proenza Schouler and Balmain.
Currently, Balmain's ready-to-wear collection is one of the hottest in the world. It's also one of the priciest. A little sequined dress goes for $21,000. An outrage to some, it's what Mary Milligan, a sales associate of 48 years, considers a challenge.
"It's my oxygen," says Milligan, "And it was Margery's oxygen, too."
Margery is Margery Steele, the Canadian retail legend who went to work for Simpson's (acquired by the Bay in 1979) in 1946, when The Room's annual fall show featured work by historic luminaries such as Lucien Lelong, Claire McCardell and Hardy Amies.
A buyer for The Room, starting in 1962, and its director from 1971 till 1998 when she retired (just months before she died of cancer), Steele was a small woman with big hair.
Capable of rapture, she was also in tune with reality. She shopped the showrooms of Europe, bearing in mind what her customers liked to wear and what their lives required them to own.
Brenda Emslie, managing director of The Room, remembered Steele fondly and praised Brooks.
"Bonnie," said Emslie, surveying the scene, "makes it real."
alklay
Senior Member
Unfortunately, the other 95% of floor space in the downtown store looks run down and outdated (frayed carpets from 1970, being held down to the floor with duct-tape...on the main floor!!).
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
It would be nice if they did a Carlu number on the Arcadian Court and restored it to a semblance of the original. Failing that, ditch the faux columns and the preposterous entablature above them and reinvent the space as something thoroughly contemporary.