Chaoran's Sustainability Blog

Holt Renfrew has revealed new details and renderings for its CF Pacific Centre store in Vancouver. The store is being expanded by about 40,000 square feet, and will be completed in a series of phases over the next few months.

The existing 147,000 square foot Holt Renfrew Vancouver store originally opened in 2007, and it is being enlarged to almost 188,000 square feet by annexing adjacent space formerly occupied by a sports retailer. Many departments will be expanded, with about 80% of the existing store to be renovated. Approximately 80 new positions will be added as a result of the expansion. The store’s women’s leather goods and footwear departments will triple in size, while jewellery will expand by about 50%. The store will feature a new Beauty Lab, Nail Bar and Style Studio in its expanded ground-floor beauty hall.

A new Chanel flagship boutique is currently under construction on the store’s ground floor.

Interestingly, Vancouver’s first freestanding Chanel location opened in 1991 on Burrard Street (now occupied by Coach Burrard Flagship). Several years later Chanel relocated to a 5,000 square foot two level free-standing boutique on West Hastings Street, which closed in the summer of 2010 due to brand’s sustainability and environment concerns, and Chanel decided to open their brand-owned store (concession) within Holt Renfrew to save more costs.

Other luxury shop-in-store leased boutiques set to relocate and expand include Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., David Yurman, Gucci, Prada, Christian Dior, Tom Ford, mii miu and Fendi. The new Fendi boutique will replace Chanel on the store’s third floor with a concession that will feature women’s ready-to-wear and furs. Tom Ford and miu miu are two brand-owned boutiques who first enter Vancouver’s luxury retail market, and Tom Ford will be the first Canadian brand-owned boutique.

Apparently, despite the big renovation for Holt Renfrew itself due to increasing competition such as the new Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus Vancouver store would be opened within next fe years, there is a tendency that many luxury brands are willing to open their boutique within the luxury department store, which is the idea of “concession”, in other words concession means the brand-owned, brand-operated leased boutique within one department store. From my point of view, this is an obvious progressive strategy for these high-end brands to become more “green'”, cost-saving and the most important thing is becoming more sustainable to operates their stores as concessions instead of non environmentally-friendly free standing boutiques outside.

Italian luxury brand Prada has opened its 8,200 square foot North American flagship boutique in Vancouver “Luxury Zone” – Alberni Street. It’s the latest luxury brand to open in the city’s burgeoning “Luxury Zone”.

Prada Vancouver Flagship on Alberni Street

The Prada Vancouver flagship is the second free-standing boutique in Canada, following its Toronto Bloor Street flagship which opened in 1997. And this is the fourth Prada authorized boutique in Vancouver, followed by other three Prada-owned concessions located in Holts Vancouver. Specifically, Prada operates several concessions in Canada, all located within Holt Renfrew stores in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Vancouver’s Holt’s boasts Canada’s only Prada men’s shop-in-store concession, and its new Yorkdale concession spans an impressive 3,000 square feet with its own mall entrance. Prada recently re-opened its Montreal Holt Renfrew concession, showcasing the brand’s bright new store design featuring black-and-white checkered flooring.

Prada Holts Vancouver Concessions (Accessory Boutique and Womenswear Boutique)

Prada Toronto Free-standing boutique and Holts Yorkdale Concession

The new Prada free-standing boutique locates in the corner retail space of The Carlyle, a luxury complex at the southeast corner of Alberni Street and Thurlow Street, and it locates next to upscale brands’ free-standing boutiques such as Tory Burch, De Beers, Moncler, Burberry, Versace, Brunello Cucinelli, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Tiffany, Hermes, Montblanc and Escada. As well as a number of other luxury brands which are not far away, such as Louis Vuitton Masion, Christian Dior Couture and Gucci boutique located at Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, Fendi and David Yurman concession at Holt Renfrew, Christian Louboutin and Delvaux concession at Nordstrom.

Vancouver Luxury Zone

Even though Prada has already opened three concessions at Holts Vancouver, why Prada chose to announce a bigger free-standing boutique located in Vancouver “Luxury Zone”? From my point of view, Prada’s Vancouver concessions, located within Holt Renfrew, continue to see robust sales. The city boasts a population of loyal Prada shoppers, as well as a growing number of affluent tourists. The Alberni Street retail space itself, being on a corner with high exposure, presented a desirable opportunity for Prada, at a rent substantially less than what is being paid for many of its flagships. Additionally, since many luxury fashion brands open Vancouver’s market even the whole Canada’s market in Vancouver “Luxury Zone”, apparently it is a tendency for more luxury retailers to open their free-standing boutiques there, especially brand like Prada who already has a successful market in Vancouver through opening brand-owned concessions within high-end department store.

However, about a dozen animal rights activists gathered outside Prada’s flagship store in Vancouver on the opening day, March 11, to protest the company’s treatment of ostriches.

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) lined up outside the store at Thurlow and Alberni, and hauled a life-size ostrich replica to the protest outside the store’s grand opening. The objective for PETA to do that is to ask Prada to drop exotic skins completely. From their point of view, it’s the 21st century and people can choose to be cruel or kind, and there are so many luxurious, high-end vegan textiles that there is no reason to use real animals, like a live ostrich, to turn into fabric.

Apparently, how to strike a balance between high-end fashion and sustainability is increasingly disturbing. This is a long way for high-end retailer to think and conduct a better way for their customers.

According to the tendency that many fast fashion brands seeking maximized profits without considering to meet high standard of ethics and social responsibility, especially the recent accident happened in 2013 for Canadian fast fashion brand- Joe Fresh, here are my insights.

The most important point is that it may be immoral for fast fashion retailers form the West to locate their factories in low wage undeveloped countries where labors must work in a laborious environment for a long time everyday with quite limited wages. Since the philosophy of fast fashion brands is producing fancy, modern and economical clothes with a speedy inspiration to capture the latest world’s fashion tendency, it is generally recognized that fast fashion should seek places with low cost and large number of labor to cater to the need of fast-paced production. Nevertheless, many corporates neglect their social responsibilities when they administrate staffs; for instance, to manufacture cheap textiles with a high speed, Joe Fresh ignored to protect workers’ human rights. More precisely, it overlooked to check the basic structural integrity of building regularly; therefore, this negligence gave a rise to the collapsing and several violent fires in its factory. The ignorance of safety infrastructure renovation represents that the company did not perform well in assuming responsibilities for employees, since fast fashion retailers should have an obligation to provide an acceptable working environment for their labors. Furthermore, the tendency is that more and more customers are willing to pay higher prices for their fast fashion clothing to improve working circumstances in underdeveloped countries, and this is a persuasive evidence that corporates should shoulder their responsibilities for their employees.

Another essential point is that whether to leave the production base or continue to put more emphasis on conducting better in the role of ethics under the circumstance of recent collapsing accident in Bangladesh in 2013 has sparked much debate. More specifically, some people contemplate that low-wage textiles industry is a required incitement for underdeveloped countries trying to associate to the global economic integration of the 21^st century, while other individuals arguse that it may be cruel exploitation of impoverished and weak people, especially women and children, to invent garments for wealthy customers at quite unreasonable prices. Indisputably, numerous retailers, such as Disney, determined to leave Bangladesh due to fear of the similar disaster happening again and uncertainty of abundant legislations to safeguard their workers’ rights. However, considering the low-wage textiles industry can facilitate the development of developing countries’ economy, it is believed that pulling over market suddenly may be unprincipled.

Joe Fresh is one of the popular and successful Canadian fast fashion brands in North America fast fashion market. Joe’s business model is selling products at ultra low prices grounded on manufacturing clothes at low cost in some developing countries, for instance Bangladesh, and its image is the symbol of “Fresh”, which means bright, colorful, and playful fashion. The most significant thing happened to Joe lately is that it experienced a challenge about ethical issues in April 2013; specifically, an eight-story factory called Rana Plaza in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, that manufactured clothes for Joe Fresh collapse. The most serious problem is that 1,127 individuals were killed by this disaster, including numerous children and women. Besides people being killed by the collapsing, hundreds of workers died in several destructive fires at Bangladeshi garment factories. As many inculpable and impoverished people lost their lives, this accident is concentrated other individuals’ attention on whether western clothing brands abide by the social responsibility and treat their employees in developing countries fairly or not. Moreover, plentiful ethical questions arise through this disaster as well.

From my point of view, many fast fashion brands give priority to maximizing their profits without considering seeking to meet various social and environmental goals. In other words, these companies concentrate on an invisible hand of open and free competition to make the most of their benefits. As we know, the main philosophy of fast fashion brands is quickly manufacturing at an affordable prices. Not only the price is attractive, but also is the fashionable style of fast fashion absorbing. More specifically, the market positioning of fast fashion brands is similar to fast food, it is convenient, fast, and inexpensive. Also, one of the most important reasons why fast fashion brands are crazily popular in recent fashion industry is that fast fashion captures the most popular fashion trends presented in fashion week every season. Since the competition is increasingly stiff in fast fashion industry, the only thing many fast fashion brands care about is profits. However, many customers complain about the quality of clothes and criticize its products like garbage. It is manifest that many fast fashion brands does not conform to social responsibility of business; precisely, it may not cater to consumers’ need of product quality.