The French luxury fashion house was founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton, a trunk maker who revolutionized luggage design and became widely known for his artisanal craft and emblematic style.
Over generations of the Vuitton family the design and gamut of the brand’s leather goods expanded to monogrammed luggage, handbags, and accessories and over time to ready-to-wear fashion, shoes, watches, jewelry, and fragrances. Today Louis Vuitton is a flagship brand within LVMH, the world’s largest and most prestigious luxury retail conglomerate.
Louis Vuitton (LV) has a commanding market presence, with almost 500 stores, in some fifty countries located in fashion capitals and upscale shopping districts. In the United States, its 121 stores span eighty cities across thirty-five states, with the most notable footprint in California, New York, Florida and Texas.
In Canada Louis Vuitton operates a total of ten locations across the country. The brand opened its first flagship in 1983, in Toronto’s Bloor Street and from there expanded to Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, and Edmonton. To date, it has seven standalone stores, three in Toronto, and one in each of the other locations. In addition, it opened concessions within Holt Renfrew department stores in Toronto’s Bloor-Yorkville district and Yorkdale Shopping Centre as well as in Vancouver’s Pacific Centre and Montreal’s Holt Renfrew Ogilvy department complex.
In 2020, SAJO was entrusted with the expansion and renovation of the Louis Vuitton flagship in Dallas’ top shopping destination at NorthPark Center. In 2022, as general contractor and construction manager, and in partnership with client architects, SAJO completed a Louis Vuitton flagship at the Bravern, located in Bellevue, Washington.
In Canada, SAJO’s partnership with Louis Vuitton began in 2018 with the brand’s concession space in Toronto’s Holt Renfrew department store followed, in 2019, by another concession in Vancouver’s downtown Holt Renfrew Pacific Centre store. SAJO’s most recent Louis Vuitton project is a standalone flagship in Montreal, the first of its kind in the city, located in the newly constructed Royalmount luxury shopping mall, in the upscale district of Mount Royal.
In collaboration with DK Studio Architects, Ace Architectural Millwork, and GFM, a Chinese supplier specialized in stone, this 29-week project was undertaken while the entire mall was under construction. Meticulous logistics planning and coordination was required by SAJO to circumvent the challenging circumstances of the mall’s ongoing construction. The Louis Vuitton flagship was successfully completed, opening its doors on September 20th, 2024, just fifteen days after the inauguration of the Royalmount mall.
Among the largest Louis Vuitton stores in Canada, the Royalmount flagship offers a warm and intimate setting for browsers and shoppers alike. It showcases a broad range of products for both men and women, from ready-to-wear collections, leather goods and accessories, to fine jewelry and fragrances displayed in decorative, freestanding, and bespoke glass counters.
The store’s architectural design is both modern and traditional, featuring natural materials, earth-toned flooring and exotic-colored sofas, all set against a backdrop of inlaid display panels and ubiquitous lighting. Works by contemporary artists, including Canadian abstract painter Jonathan Forrest and Montrealer Heidi Spector, known for her minimalist geometric artworks, punctuate the retail scene. Vintage items, sourced from the Parisian archives, further evoke the brand’s artisanal heritage and artistic aura.
