Andrews, a Toronto-based family-owned upscale womenswear retailer, has opened its new location in Yorkville Village, replacing another storefront nearby in the mall that operated for several years.
Though the doors of Andrews were opened in 1990, the heritage of Andrews goes back much further. Starting in the 1940’s at Holt Renfrew, the family has a long history in fashion and retail in Canada.
“Every dinner conversation, every car ride, every trip was completely immersed in fashion and retail – with a passion to serve the customer,” said Darren Mason, President of Andrews.
Its four locations now cover the Greater Toronto Area – Bayview Village to Yorkville Village to CF Sherway Gardens to Oakville with further afield clients who shop online from across Canada.
“We’re continuously fine-tuning and tailoring the experience we offer to our clients – from every season’s curation of our fashion offering to mindfully considering what can be offered alongside in lifestyle, home, and artware; or how we can further elevate our client’s time with us in an experiential way – in-store or offline,” said Mason.
“With the new location at Yorkville Village, it is a revitalized return to that experience of a luxury shopping destination, once known as Hazelton Lanes, and the authenticity of Yorkville and what we have to offer with our latest curation of elevated casual and contemporary luxury fashion.
“Our company’s mission is ‘to inspire every woman’s personal style by encouraging creativity, individuality, and confidence.”
Mason said offline Andrews will be looking at exploring options to propagate successes from its concept store in Oakville to its other stores.
“We want to stay with that experience of the individual, making time spent by clients with us more experiential and connecting them with expressions of beauty that resonate – in fashion or lifestyle,” he said.“Our clients are our compass. Online, we will soon be relaunching an improved website to offer customers a more dynamic and seamless online shopping experience.”
The newest store is on the upper level of Yorkville Village, beside the Hazelton Avenue entrance. A former location was located up the hall facing a central atrium.
Featuring the latest in modern luxury, the newly relocated store offers a highly curated collection of upscale fashion and accessories from around the world.
The store is 4,000 square feet and features an abundance of natural light streams through large arched windows and Andrews said the vibe recaptures the charm of this upscale shopping destination, which was known as Hazelton Lanes and the authenticity of Yorkville.
“We’re delighted with our new location in Yorkville Village,” said Mason. “The Yorkville neighbourhood has long been the epicentre for fashion and lifestyle retailers, we are very proud to have been a part of this dynamic community for more than 30 years. The store is uniquely situated amongst a bustling array of lifestyle retailers including art galleries, health and wellness studios, restaurants, and floral designers.”
The new Yorkville location is part of Andrews’ overall strategy to reinvigorate the brand for future growth. Last fall, the retailer opened its first lifestyle concept store in the heart of downtown Oakville. The standalone store features the latest in modern, curated apparel, alongside lifestyle, home, and vintage designer pieces from across the globe.
The retailer describes its new Yorkville location like this:
“The store offers an experiential layout for customers to explore collections that speak to the distinct, yet overlapping personas of their individual lifestyles. Conceptualized from the Japandi style of interiors, the naturalistic environment is punctuated by modern fixtures which seamlessly complement the building’s arched statement windows,” it says.
“Tailored to Yorkville, the store features elevated casual pairings of fashion favourites with contemporary looks from Eleventy, Fabiana Filippi, Frank and Eileen, and Max Mara. Denim remains a staple with coveted brands such as AG Jeans, Citizens of Humanity, Frame, and Mother. New fashion-forward brands this season include Danish fashion-house, Munthe, NY eco-accessories darling, Naghedi, and LA-based celebrity favourite fashion brand, Rhode, all of which fuse together in this expertly curated environment.”
