"I'm elated. I'm excited. All the e-words," said an exultant Bonnie Brooks, president and CEO of the Bay on Wednesday night as she welcomed 800 guests to the extraordinary, extravagant and elegant relaunch of The Room as a downtown fashion destination.
Invited on a walk-through earlier in the day, the press turned into lords and ladies gaga. Some were struck speechless; among those who could find words, reactions ranged from "exciting" to "incredibly exciting."
Suzanne Timmins, the Bay's fashion director, said, "It's beautiful clothes in a beautiful space" – as if that was all there was to it.
The Room, which is not a single defined area as its name might suggest, is a 21,500-square-foot suite of spaces that the interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg has made bright by opening windows that had long been sealed off.
The floor is pale, white walls are hand-painted with antler motifs (a lighthearted nod to the Bay's corporate crest), and there are often no walls at all. Instead, there's an airy divider strung with shiny acrylic blocks and another one made of polished stainless steel rectangles. Both lure customers to look beyond the merchandise that is immediately in front of them. Gazing at a perfectly plain Halston opera coat (collarless, belted, floor-length) in black cashmere, you might spy in the distance the fan-shaped pink ruffles that Bruno Frisoni calls shoes.
The stock at The Room will include almost 70 high-fashion labels, a mix of big international names such as Azzedine Alaia, John Galliano, and Sonia Rykiel and Canadian favourites such as Comrags, Lida Baday, Pink Tartan and Wayne Clark. Several lines are available nowhere else in town. Among those are Halston, Frisoni, Erdem, Christopher Kane, Proenza Schouler and Balmain.
Currently, Balmain's ready-to-wear collection is one of the hottest in the world. It's also one of the priciest. A little sequined dress goes for $21,000. An outrage to some, it's what Mary Milligan, a sales associate of 48 years, considers a challenge.
"It's my oxygen," says Milligan, "And it was Margery's oxygen, too."
Margery is Margery Steele, the Canadian retail legend who went to work for Simpson's (acquired by the Bay in 1979) in 1946, when The Room's annual fall show featured work by historic luminaries such as Lucien Lelong, Claire McCardell and Hardy Amies.
A buyer for The Room, starting in 1962, and its director from 1971 till 1998 when she retired (just months before she died of cancer), Steele was a small woman with big hair.
Capable of rapture, she was also in tune with reality. She shopped the showrooms of Europe, bearing in mind what her customers liked to wear and what their lives required them to own.
Brenda Emslie, managing director of The Room, remembered Steele fondly and praised Brooks.
"Bonnie," said Emslie, surveying the scene, "makes it real."
