The Topshop store at Yorkdale Mall. (Courtesy of Topshop Topman/The Bay)Canadians will no longer have to travel across the pond (or the border) to get their Topshop fix. The U.K.-based High Street retail star, known for its celeb collaborations (Kate Moss anyone?) and youthful, trendy clothes has opened its first flagship store in Toronto.
In collaboration with Canadian retail giant the Bay, Topshop and its line of men’s clothes called Topman, opened early October in the city's Yorkdale Mall after experimenting with pop-up stores in downtown Toronto this summer and capsule collections in Vancouver and Calgary.
There are plans to roll out more flagship stores in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary next year.
Topshop is opening in an already crowded fast-fashion market, where retail companies whip up designs taken from the latest runway collections and get them into their shops pronto, so customers will have access to the latest trends. Retailers such as H&M, Forever 21, Zara, Joe Fresh and J.Crew are competing with each other for the customer's dollar. All of them are trying to outdo each other; whether it be with more weekly shipments of new merchandise, high fashion designer collaborations (H&M has partnered with Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin to name a few) and quality clothing that costs less than the competition.
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"It was the right time to [expand in Canada,]" says Topshop creative director, Kate Phelan, who formerly worked as a fashion director at Vogue UK. "The Bay offered a great retail space and it's an important retail company we can learn from."
Boasting more than 15,000 square feet of retail space spanning two floors, the store looks like a high-class night club with shiny, polished white and black walls, neon signs and lots of good looking people dressed to the nines in six-inch leopard stilettos, skinny pants and cropped blazers.
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Topshop black parka with faux fur lined hood ($178). (Courtesy Topshop Topman/The Bay)In short, it's a fashion lover's dream come true. "The Topshop girl has a huge appetite for fashion," says Phelan. "This girl is an individual and inspired. She sets trends, she comes here and experiments."
Phelan adds that Canadian customers will be getting the same experience as their U.K. counterparts."We make conscious decisions of how we do it in London and make sure we are doing the same here," she says. "The experience here is just as good, we have the same designer collaborations" ( Those designers would be David Koma, Simone Rocha and Michael van der Ham, to name a few.)
The store has an impressive variety of clothes, accessories and even makeup that will suit trendy styles such as the glamourous party girl (animal-print body-conscious mini dresses, snakeskin heels) boho-chic (long, pleated skirts, chunky colourful knits,) the '60s mod look (tailored tuxedo blazers, platform two-toned heels, striped sweaters,) the rocker chick (quilted leather jackets, glittery gold shorts, Jimi Hendrix tees) and the vintage lover (Dalmatian coats, pencil skirts, structured bags.)
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Topshop leopard print high heeled ankle boot ($173). (Courtesy Topshop Topman/The Bay)And to keep warm on those cold Canadian days and nights, Phelan has the perfect outfit: throw on a "luxury" parka with faux fur trim ($178) over a chunky knit sweater, add skinny jeans and a pair of motorcycle boots, which retail for $130.
If J. Crew’s high Canadian prices left you skeptical of fashion imports, Phelan insists that prices here are 10 percent lower than those in the U.S. and comparable to U.K. exchange rates of the Canadian dollar. And good news for students: they get a 10 per cent discount on merchandise when they show their student cards.
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