Diary

Topshop’s biggest store outside the UK — all 33,000 square feet of it — opens today in The Bay on Granville Street in Vancouver.

“I’m still getting lost in it, I can assure you,” said managing director Mary Homer when I stopped by yesterday to get a first look at the space, which houses Topshop’s specialty boutique, a petite section, tall section, maternity wear section and gigantic shoe section. Plus, a personal shopping suite.

After my tour I sat down with a few of Topshop’s top people and here’s what they had to say…

Mary Homer on the pre-opening jitters 

It gives us such a sense of pride that people are excited for Topshop. You hope that people are going to love Topshop but until people actually come through the door and buy, I’m always a little nervous about the reception.

Mary Homer on how the web’s changed the game

You’ve got an online business and it’s brilliant, but the stores have to be even better now. Our customer is quite interesting because she will go online and look and then she’ll visit the store and buy.

Talk to teenagers and ask them if they’re going to shop online and they say “Oh no. I want to go shopping, I want to have lunch, I want to try things on.”

Topman creative director Gordon Richardson on women shopping the men’s section

You shop Topman? Please say yes. [Well I will now that I’ve seen the sweaters – Kelsey]

A lot of women shop Topman because it’s just good, great clothes, it’s like weekend clothes. Put on a sweater or a big blanket-looking shirt with a boy blazer or a boy jean and it kind of works.

Gordon Richardson on evolving men’s fashion

I think men just haven’t been let free yet to explore. We were just talking earlier that it’s taken us 10, 12 years to build brand credibility within Topman. We needed to make it a cool brand and we needed to improve the product, which I think we’ve done and we’re now at this point where we’re a fashion-led brand every bit as good as Topshop is for women.

Gordon Richardson on what it’s like being creative director

It’s about the creative brushstroke that I have across everything, which is a great role but quite exhausting sometimes.

The stakes are higher, the pressure is there to get it right. There are some things that don’t work as well but you can’t run a fashion business on everything being right. Fashion is about creativity and constant change so you have to run with that.

Gordon Richardson on the big picture

You have to think globally now as well because we’re such an international brand although we’re very British-focused, a lot of our imagery and our look is British. Obviously we’re now going to have now consider international markets.

It has a very British slant this season with all the fabrics and tweeds. The tweed is actual Harris Tweed and I don’t think there are any other brands at our level working with it. It’s woven in the outer Hebrides, north of England. It’s proper traditional cloth gentlemen used to wear to hunt, and shoot and fish.

London calling? Put it on hold and head to Topshop Vancouver instead.

P.S. Follow The Anthology on Facebook and Twitter and you’ll be the first to see behind-the-scenes photos.

P.P.S. You’ll find all The Anthology’s interviews with the likes of designer Rachel Roy, J.Crew’s design directors Tom Mora and Frank Muytjens, and New York-based artist Jason Young right here.

If you had 15 minutes to ask Rachel Roy anything you wanted, what would you ask? When I sat down with the New York-based designer before her appearance at The Bay in honour of her fall collection, I asked her about Oprah, interning and time travel…

You have described RACHEL Rachel Roy as the younger sister of your designer line. What do you love most about designing it?

Because I was that girl growing up, I have a very kindred spirit to her. I really respect her. I understand that just because she might not be able to pay $500 for a dress she wants fashion and she wants what she sees in Vogue or the magazines that she reads. She wants better options so it’s really important to me to respect that and give the options that I am able to give within a certain price point.

What if you could speak to yourself when you were “That girl?” If you could travel back in time to give yourself a piece of advice when you began your career as an intern at Rocawear, what would you say?

I would say, “Good choice. I’m proud of you. You’re confident enough, thankful enough and capable enough to work for free simply to be in an industry that you’ve been dying to be in.”

Advice I would give to myself would be to have a point of view and stick to it. I definitely do that now and I think I’ve done that since my 30s but sometimes in your 20s you learn it if you’re not taught it right away. Having a point of view that you truly believe in – and sticking to it no matter who’s doing what in your personal life or your professional life – the world at large will have more respect for you if you actually have a story that you live.

In addition to your success as a designer, you’ve become a staple in pop culture with appearances on Oprah and Project Runway and celebrity clients like the first lady. What is it that most amazes you about what you’ve accomplished?

I’m just doing what I’m good at. I’m not good at a lot of things, but I think that everyone is good at something. When you’re good in the arts, it’s not something that – when you go through the public school system in the United States at least — it’s not something that you’re taught. So you can think “What the hell am I good at? What’s my gift?” And a lot of times you don’t learn that until you’re much older.

For me, that was knowing my gift was being able to take my surroundings and make them, to the best of my ability, visually as stimulating or comforting or pleasing as possible. That would be even with homes – I would go into friends’ places and help them shift stuff. In college I would be the girl that my friends would ask to come clean out their closets. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I say that to say we’re all good at something and when you can figure that out great, and it really doesn’t matter what you’re getting paid because your soul is happy.

[My dress c/o RACHEL Rachel Roy, my purse and necklace are both vintage.]