Attention Shoppers

By doubling its space, Holt Renfrew is betting $30-million that "retail is not just about buying a shirt—it's about buying a retail experience.

By Rebecca Philps

BACK IN THE 1970S, Carolyn Weiner, one-time stylist of Montreal’s social elite and Holt Renfrew’s head buyer, came to Vancouver for a fashion show. At her hotel, she called down to the concierge desk to ask for a dresser, wanting someone to assist with her toilette. The concierge sent up a chest of drawers. “I will never cross the Rockies again,” she announced as she boarded the plane back to Toronto.

Thirty years later, Holt’s is crossing the Rockies in a big way. “Limos will pull up on to the magenta carpet leading into our front entrance,” says Gary Balaski, general manager of Holt Renfrew Vancouver. “Trees will be lit up with magenta lighting, strobe lights will dance across the sky, and 1,200 people—including our clients, vendors, designers, fashion industry senior executives—will sip champagne. It’s going to be a big party.”

Balaski gestures towards the bustling construction site across from his temporary 10th-floor office in the Canaccord Tower, overlooking Holt’s new Granville-and-Dunsmuir location. The chaotic scene below will, in less than two months, morph into the city’s most ambitious retail venture in recent memory. Set to open May 30, the new store—reportedly costing over $30-million—will, at 135,000 square feet, be more than double the size of the former space.

“I love that it used to be difficult to get big-name designers to come to Vancouver, because it was so far from Toronto,” says Balaski. “Now we’ll have so many famous names coming to our store.” This proud-poppa speech, given many times since Holt Renfrew president Caryn Lerner announced the expansion in 2005, is well-rehearsed. He steps back from the window and sits down at a meeting table. Impeccable in a charcoal Hugo Boss suit, clipped salt-and-pepper hair smoothed in place, he pours coffee. In the background, phones ring and email alerts chime. He ignores them, happy to draw a picture of the shopping experience Holt’s hopes to create.

You’ll pull into the underground parkade and toss your keys to the valet (he’ll arrange for your car to be detailed while you shop). Pass through the men’s department on the concourse level, with its reclaimed wood flooring and Dior, Ralph Lauren and Ferragamo boutiques. Ride an escalator up to the main floor and step into the full-service spa for a touch-up manicure or a facial. The on-site concierge will find theatre tickets for next weekend’s trip to New York, or book a dog walker. Here, too, on the main floor are purses, shoes and other accessories. Alexander McQueen. Chloe. Jimmy Choo. Coach. Fendi. At the new cosmetics department you’ll find more than 45 new product lines to play with, arranged by colour, not brand. And, in the fragrance section, Canada’s first Frederic Malle glass and steel, phone-booth-like cylinders, where you can experience the purest whiff of a perfume sample.

On the second level, women’s designer and contemporary labels, plus emerging names in what Holt’s calls its “World Design Lab,” are set off by simmering quartzite, glass mosaics and stone-laid flooring. Marc Jacobs. Dolce & Gabbana. Prada. Gucci. Chanel. Michael Kors. Helmut Lang. Stella McCartney. Book one of the five new personal shopping suites and let a personal shopper do the work. Carry on up to the rooftop restaurant, which opens onto a landscaped terrace highlighted with a palate of green and gold. Sidle up to the floating, elliptical bar for a cocktail.

“It’s all those things that will make this store worth coming to,” says Balaski, leaning back in his chair. “It’s a place of escape, of entertainment. Because nowadays retail is not just about buying a shirt, you know. It’s about buying an experience.”

Part of the experience is architectural. This is not the sort of department store your mother shopped at, with tiled aisles, plush-carpeted boutiques, and escalators in the middle of each floor, always going up when you want to go down. The second storey of the new Holt’s is wrapped in quilted glass, a new product designed for the store by local craftsman Nathan Allan, and at the entrance: Vancouver designer Omer Arbel’s installation of over 100 pendulum lights. The central core consists of a series of stacked but rotated ellipses—an atrium of circles within a square, topped by an enormous skylight. Brand boutiques surround a light-filled central courtyard whose elliptical openings connect the central spaces on each level to the sky above.

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