The Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior concession boutiques at Saks Fifth Avenue at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto will be shuttering at the end of December this year. Both stores have operated inside of Saks since 2016.
The Louis Vuitton boutique set to close in December spans about 1,200 square feet on the street level of Saks. The boutique is prominent in the store given that it has its own dedicated corner facade and windows facing onto both Queen Street and Yonge Street. The Louis Vuitton concession carries a range of bags and accessories.
Christian Dior will also be closing its two boutique spaces within Saks in downtown Toronto at the end of December. That includes a beautiful main floor Dior bag and accessory concession that opened in May of 2016, and a plush third-floor women’s ready-to-wear salon spanning about 2,000 square feet that opened in September of 2016.
Saks Fifth Avenue’s downtown Toronto store was the first in Canada when it opened to the public on February 18, 2016. The store’s main floor includes several other luxury brands in dedicated boutique spaces including several concessions. The remaining leased concessions on Saks’ main floor include Prada, Saint Laurent and Piaget while Saks also operates shop-in-stores for brands including Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Chloé, Valentino, Chopard and Birks.
Since its opening, several boutiques have shut on the main floor of the downtown Toronto Saks. That includes a David Yurman jewellery boutique that operated as a concession, Boucheron which jumped ship to partner with Holt Renfrew, De Grisogono which shut its global operations last year, Australian beauty brand Aesop, and most recently French luxury brand Celine shut its main floor Saks bag and accessory boutique a few days before opening a standalone flagship at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre.
A sales associate at Saks said that the downtown Toronto store is expected to see a partial renovation beginning in 2022, including an expanded menswear offering and a related women’s footwear department. A basement-level grocery store operated by Pusateri’s Fine Foods is also in the process of reopening in phases after pandemic shutdowns due in part to low foot traffic in the office worker-dependent PATH system.
Saks Fifth Avenue also operates two other stores in Canada — in March of 2016 the retailer opened at CF Sherway Gardens in Toronto and in February of 2018 Saks opened at CF Chinook Centre in Calgary. Saks was expected to expand further into the Montreal and Vancouver markets but its expansion has been since shelved due to weak sales performance numbers.
In Toronto, Louis Vuitton and Dior brands are available in both standalone stores and at concessions in Holt Renfrew stores. Louis Vuitton operates two standalone stores in Toronto (at 150 Bloor Street West and at Yorkdale), as well as concessions at Holt Renfrew (at 50 Bloor Street West and at Yorkdale). Dior operates its largest store location in North America at 131 Bloor Street West in Toronto as well as a large concession space with the full Dior fashion collections for women and men at Holt Renfrew Yorkdale.
