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| We had to borrow this image from Toronto Life, since it is the only suitable Creeds image we can find online! The link to where we found this image is here ——–> [Image Source] |
Hello Readers! We want to do a retrospective on Toronto’s former luxury retailer, Creeds. If you have any stories, memories or photos, please feel free to submit them to us at insider@retail-insider.com.
To those unfamiliar, Creeds was a Toronto-based women’s mini-department store that was last located at 45 Bloor Street West in the Manulife Centre. Creeds’ former space is now partially occupied by William Ashley china. Creeds was approximately 35,000 square feet over two floors and featured several exclusive shop-in-store boutiques. It introduced Canada to Chanel with an elegant in-store Chanel Boutique. Creeds also included shops for Christian Dior, Emanuel Ungaro, Sonia Rykiel, Michael Kors and Krizia. Also included were a world-class fur salon, some gourmet food brands, cosmetics and jewellery The store unfortunately filed for bankruptcy in 1990.
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| Former Creeds location, now William Ashley. [Image Source] |
In the past and especially in the 1980’s, Toronto was a fashion destination where wealthy women would fly in to shop at high-end places like Hazelton Lanes, Creeds and the then-slightly less-upscale Holt Renfrew store across the street from Creeds. We will do a separate article on the history of the Toronto Holt Renfrew flagship store in the near future.
We will also be doing a series of articles on the history of some well-known Canadian stores such as Holt Renfrew, Simpson’s, Woodward’s, Bretton’s and others. We love retail history and hope readers will enjoy our upcoming articles.
Retail Insider will announce a few new projects next week. We’ll be sending out ‘secret shoppers’ across the country to evaluate stores and their customer service. And we won’t be playing favourites. We’ll cover a variety of retailers and be evaluating them on a scale of ‘one–to–Nordstrom’. We’re only half-joking about that evaluation scale.
We’ve decided to make Retail Insider more fun and potentially interactive. Keep reading and have an excellent weekend, everyone!
p.s. We’re sending a big shout-out and thank you to Toronto Life Magazine. In the early 90’s in small-town Alberta, this author started loving retail after a neighbourhood mom gave us a Toronto Life Magazine providing insight into a fashionable world we had previously never experienced.
