Luxury menswear retailer Harry Rosen has launched HAROLD, a new clothing line created in collaboration with its customers.
The iconic Canadian company said the new private label will bring a lineup of made-to-measure traditional and modern suits, casual and business apparel, and ready-to-wear pieces all at a more accessible price point. HAROLD is available exclusively in Harry Rosen stores and online, with more products to come this fall.
Ian Rosen, the retailer’s President and Chief Operating Officer, said the brand started in 1954 as a custom clothier.
“It’s always been in our brand’s DNA,” he said. “Over the years we’ve continuously evolved to help our customers’ changing needs and helped brands bring their custom offerings to Canada. Today, we start our own.
“Let’s talk about style. Style is really getting encapsulated and being expressed through details and we’re really excited to come upon a program that allows you to customize so much in so many different categories whether that was a traditional and professional suit whether that was a sports jacket, whether that was something as interesting as a bomber jacket with a matching pant. We call it the sartorial track suit. A trench coat. A rain coat. A safari jacket. Many different styles of dress shirts. There’s so much product out there that you can kind of build your own adventure around.
“We really feel that it was an untapped opportunity for us to go after and build upon our heritage as a menswear specialist. My grandfather started the store on Parliament Street with a focus on made to measure. So it’s really in our DNA. This is the modern interpretation around it.”
The brand currently has 17 stores across Canada.
HAROLD offers an unprecedented level of customization with many of its pieces. Customers can choose everything from the number of buttons to the photographs they want to use on the personalized lining of their jackets and more, taking personal style far beyond traditional tailoring, said the retailer.
HAROLD continues Harry Rosen’s tradition of using the finest quality textiles and exacting stitching, offering materials from some of the most prestigious fabric mills, such as ZEGNA, Loro Piana, and Reda, it added.
“In terms of wrapping it around a brand called HAROLD, I think it’s got a youthful energy to it. It’s punchy with what we call the colour electric melon, the orange. We really wanted to speak to a younger customer and make custom-made in that category, along with the ready-made components that surround it, a little less intimidating,” said Rosen.
“We’re targeting the lower end of our price points. It’s an entry price point for us and you can build up depending on the fabric selections and the amount of customization that you want. But you can really see a younger guy buying into this. The marketing materials are so much speaking to that younger man of tomorrow and it’s not speaking in a professional, business sense because we know that the work environment has changed forever. It’s speaking of the flexibility of wearing things to a date night, to the office, work from home, you name it.”
The launch campaign, “HAROLD × You,” presents HAROLD as a high-fashion collaboration between Harry Rosen’s designers and its customers; showing how everyday inspiration from life can be crafted into custom garments.
The campaign includes television, social and online video, digital advertising, out-of-home, and an integration with the Juno Awards. The ad campaign was conceived by agency partner Zulu Alpha Kilo and media planning and buying was done by Horizon Media, supported by Harry Rosen’s marketing team.
“Culture is at the core of fashion, and HAROLD allows anyone to infuse their individuality into their wardrobes,” said Rosen. “We want to empower people to use inspiration from their own lives to build outfits and looks that celebrate their culture, traditions and heritage.
“We’re calling (the HAROLD areas in stores) like inspiration showrooms . . . Each HAROLD inspiration showroom has a number of different models call them or ideas, totally made up and customized in ways that we thought really show off the range.
“And what we’re encouraging clients to do, and they come in a whole various range of sizes, so if you can come in and really buy into this idea of a sartorial track suit, we have four or five options of different fabrications and different styling details for you to try on. And when you get to making your own you get to style little small things. You’re kind of working from a base model and we sampled up a ton of really exciting ideas that we think will keep the clients excited. A client can expect, whenever they walk into a Harry Rosen store, every single door there will be a HAROLD inspiration gallery that is constantly refreshed and reintegrated with new ideas.”
