Luxury brand Louis Vuitton has completed an expansion and renovation to its flagship ‘Maison’ at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver in the city’s downtown core. The store features the brand’s most updated design, and is the latest investment by Louis Vuitton in the growing Canadian market.
The Hotel Vancouver store features an expanded assortment of men’s and women’s leather goods, accessories, connected objects, fragrances, ready-to-wear, shoes, jewelry, and watches, as well as the brand’s hardsided pieces and exclusive Objets Nomades collection. Various bespoke services are offered at the Maison such as on-site hot-tamping, a dedicated artisan who applies designs to hardsided trunks, and fragrance bottle engraving.
Included in the store is a new circular staircase in wood and leather that the company says is a “masterpiece of carpentry”. Women’s apparel, bags, footwear and accessories are carried on the main floor of the store, while menswear and related categories have been given a dedicated level upstairs. The store was expanded as part of the overhaul, including new storage space in the basement of the hotel.
Artwork in the store includes a piece by Italian artist Isadora Capraro, designed for a curved wall — the art is flanked by an amber coloured Helene de Saint Lager coffee table and a Henri Bursztyn chandelier. Various Canadian artists have pieces in the store as well.
The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver Louis Vuitton store opened in 1996 at 730 Burrard Street in a much smaller one-level space that spanned about 2,000 square feet at the time. The store was expanded to about 10,000 square feet in 2010, making it the first ‘Maison’ in Canada and Vuitton’s 12th globally at the time (to mark the occasion, the company spent $1.5-million on a party that included a trip on a 70-year old steam engine train). The recent renovation to the store also resulted in a further expansion to add more space, though the company would not confirm the exact size of the store with Retail Insider.
Louis Vuitton’s first Vancouver store opened as a concession within Holt Renfrew in 1987. Holt Renfrew’s Vancouver store, which relocated in 2007, continues to house concessions for Louis Vuitton including a bag/accessory boutique on the main floor, a women’s ready-to-wear concession on the second floor, and a men’s ready-to-wear concession on the lower level men’s floor.
Sources say that Louis Vuitton was in talks with landlord QuadReal to open a store at the overhauled Oakridge Park in Vancouver (formerly Oakridge Centre) in 2025. Louis Vuitton has already confirmed that it will be opening a store in August of 2024 at Royalmount in Montreal, spanning about 9,200 square feet. It’s part of an investment by Louis Vuitton to expand in the Canadian market by opening standalone stores.
Louis Vuitton’s standalone store expansion in Canada accelerated before and into the pandemic when new stores opened in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. In the fall of 2018, the brand opened a 4,450 square foot store at CF Chinook Centre in Calgary while exiting its concession at Holt Renfrew in the city’s downtown core. In the summer of 2019, Vuitton opened a 4,600 square foot store at West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton while also exiting a downtown Holts (which ended up exiting Edmonton entirely). In the fall of 2020, Louis Vuitton opened a standalone store at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre spanning more than 7,000 square feet — while at the same time keeping its 4,000 square foot bag/accessory concession at Holt Renfrew that was selling in excess of $40 million annually. Sales at the Holts concession are said to have been maintained at a similar level despite the standalone ready-to-wear store having opened nearby in the same mall.
In the fall of 2018, Louis Vuitton marked 35 years in Canada with an activation at Union Station in Toronto that included an immersive experience on Front Street and a small pop-up store in the retail concourse. Louis Vuitton opened its first Canadian store at 110 Bloor Street West in Toronto in 1983, spanning about 2,000 square feet. After the concession at Holts in Vancouver opened in 1987, Vuitton opened its third retail space in Canada in 1989 at the Ogilvy department store in Montreal. Louis Vuitton continues to operate in the same Montreal building which is now Holt Renfrew Ogilvy.
The Bloor Street Louis Vuitton moved to a 6,000 square foot space in the early 2000s at 111 Bloor Street West (where Loro Piana will open next year), and in the spring of 2012 Vuitton relocated to its current 15,980 square foot two-level space at 150 Bloor Street West.
Louis Vuitton also operates a 2,500 square foot concession space on the main floor of Holt Renfrew at 50 Bloor Street West in Toronto — the new concession opened in late 2018 as part of a renovation to the main floor of Holts.
From February of 2016 until early 2022, Louis Vuitton operated a 1,200 square foot bag/accessory concession at Saks Fifth Avenue in downtown Toronto. It closed along with a Dior concession on the main floor of the store. Louis Vuitton also operated a 3,000 square foot store at the Cascade Plaza shopping centre in Banff, Alberta, from 1996 until its closure in May of 2011.
Louis Vuitton is a division of luxury conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (‘LVMH Group’), which includes several leading luxury brands under its corporate umbrella. Louis Vuitton was founded by a man of the same name in 1854, and now boasts a network of about 500 stores globally.
Additional Images from Louis Vuitton’s newly redesigned store at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver
