So, finally, I went to see the Royalmount.
To document my preconceptions, to get an idea. So I saw. Zara is certainly the most beautiful and the largest in Canada, the Starbucks latte tastes more luxurious than coffee, and when you walk on the marbles of the Royalmount, you feel chosen. You feel like you’re breathing a purer, euphoric air, which pushes you to adopt a jaded pout in front of the display of luxury, while a part of your brain applauds like a groupie who can’t believe how much pleasure she feels!
Let’s settle two things, present from the drafts of Royalmount.
I am not overly upset by the debate over the English toponym. It is there to please the English and allophone clientele, and tourists. It is mostly lazy and colonized.
While French IS the language of luxury, of chic. To ignore it is to deprive oneself of an obvious layer of gold plating. What a bunch of amateurs…
The place: located at the intersection of highways 15 and 40 (the two most immobile expressways in Quebec), the Royalmount will add to the traffic congestion despite, the ultimate gag, a footbridge that connects it to the De la Savane metro. We already applaud the fashionista, perched on her pumps, her arms laden with Gucci and Saint Laurent bags, trotting toward the metro. The image of luxury personified. The Royalmount has been equipped with paid parking, which will delight anti-car activists. The identity of the place is bipolar, torn from its birth: “public-transport-friendly », but deeply suburban with parking. As if he didn’t take responsibility for it.
I rather question its survival over time. Shopping centers, even the most specialized, the best designed, the most luxurious, are threatened in the long term by the radical change in our shopping habits. We have all, to varying degrees, moved to online shopping. Already, the oldest and most fragile shopping centers are disused or doomed to demolition, like Place Versailles. These large groups of stores under one roof will be gone in 10 to 15 years. In the meantime, they are condemned to constantly renew themselves, to offer “experiences” new to consumers, butterflies or waterfalls, like at DIX30 or in Vegas.
Besides, where do you buy luxury? Either in the brand boutiques in the luxury capitals of Paris, Milan and New York, with hyper-personalized service. At Holt Renfrew Ogilvy, in boutiques in Laurier West. Or online, like at SSENSE.
So, either in the privacy of one’s home, or by living one’s life to the fullest trip of luxury home clients. Not at the corner of two highways in a mid-sized city. These are the real competitors of the Royalmount.
Quebec has a twisted relationship with wealth. If we wanted to attract foreigners visiting during the summer, we would rather fall back, at the end of October, on local customers. Because, contrary to what one might imagine, wealth exists in Montreal. An article by Jean-Hugues Roy recently reported on the most recent data from Statistics Canada, according to which nearly one in four families in the greater metropolitan area had a total income of more than $150,000 per year in 20201We are talking about absolute figures here, therefore about households that have a little bit on the side, without necessarily being billionaires or even millionaires.
Surprising? Not so much. We can see, by the price of houses, the consumption habits and the number of luxury cars we come across, that comfortable households exist. However, they do not shout it from the rooftops. Someone who makes $150,000 does not necessarily dress in brand names from head to toe. I know a businessman who drives a discreetly luxurious car rather than buying the car of his dreams – and his means – so as not to harm his image. We are in the land of shameful success, of modest wealth.
Despite the rise in the standard of living of Quebecers, there are still aftereffects of the “born for a p’tit pain” syndrome. Let’s make money, okay, but let’s not flaunt it ostentatiously. That tends to change, but all the same, we collectively keep a little embarrassment.
The Royalmount’s “luxury alley”, in this mental context, will serve above all to make people dream.
Because, in the end, who will shop there?
Those who want to stick to the lifestyle of the ultra-rich, even through half-open shop windows. Not those who earn $150,000, but those who order next spring’s Dior collection directly from Paris. Those who like us to envy them. Billionaires like us to admire them and aspire to their lifestyle, as Dahlia Namian showed in her essay The provocation society.
We will gladly look at ourselves in this distorting mirror. By buying an entry-level belt at the Versace of the Royalmount, we will feel initiated, belonging a little to this world that makes many dream. We envy them and admire them at the same time. By fantasizing at the Royalmount, by breathing its crystalline air, we will forgive the ultra-rich for their excesses, the gap that is growing between them and us… since we aspire to their way of life.
The Royalmounts of this world are there to put us to sleep, to make us dream, blissfully, of the impossible. The day we wake up and our subversive laughter reaches the billionaires, we will be less naive.
I was going to Royalmount to get an idea. I did.
What do you think? Join the dialogue
Little love for the Royalmount
Many of you have expressed your views on the contribution of the new Royalmount shopping centre. Nearly two-thirds of respondents to our small survey have a negative view of the new commercial facilities at the intersection of the Décarie and Métropolitaine highways.
The Press
