Aritzia

Aritzia falls under one of those «love hate» categories for me.
I nipped in to check out their anniversary sale yesterday and my experience was just like every other I’ve had. I will summarize:
1. Walking in I’m utterly ignored. Fourteen year olds are acknowledged but I’m ignored every fucking time. Who has $ 400 to drop on jeans, me or them?
2. Their merchandising semi-​irritates me because it’s spotty — some displays are good, but looking through the racks is a pain and makes me feel like I’m at Winners. They have some nice stuff of good quality, and some looks not so good.
3. I find jeans I want to try on. Now I have a few hundred dollars of merch in my hand and a big bag so a staff member pounces on me to «start a fitting room» (aka — make sure I’m not stealing said jeans… again, me or the 14 year old?)
4. The fitting rooms; for once they don’t make me lock my bag away, but I hate that they don’t have mirrors in the room. Seriously. Now I have to fight for mirror space and try to tune out the employee who is telling me how great some unflattering jeans look on me. Yesterday however, I did like both pairs I tried and took the word of another customer.
5. I’m ready to buy — in yesterday’s case it was a pair of Seven jeans which were just so cheap I couldn’t say no (and couldn’t rationalize the $ 400 jeans because I was looking for dressy jeans and they were casual-​dressy).
6. Where is the line for the till? At least the cashier desk runs like a well oiled machine, and they are making the effort for customer service (friendly at the desk, walk around to hand you your bag).
7. Get me out of here, there are too many 14 year olds in my way!
I like Aritzia for their kick ass sales, and the odd time for a kinda-​cas-​y-​kinda-​dressy cotton t-​shirts.
However, in general I will pick Holt Renfrew over Aritzia on most other occassions… Holt’s is actually marginally cheaper and just a better shopping experience in terms of visual, merchandising, brands, and service.
So Aritzia gets my firm más o menos.