This Toronto Pop-Up Brings Artisans From Across Canada Under One Roof
Last year, department store La Maison Simons announced the launch of a new online marketplace, Fabrique 1840. Featuring over 100 Canadian artisans and independent brands, the retail hub is built around the ideas of craftsmanship and community, and takes physical form this weekend with a pop-up in Toronto.
Reflective of its online inventory, the pop-up carries pieces from 60 small businesses across various fields of design. “All the trades across the Canadian territory are represented,” Cécile Branco, Fabrique 1840’s brand director, says at the media preview of the space. “From blacksmithing to ceramics to paper goods, jewellery and leather bags.” Fabrique1840’s support of different trades and techniques employed by Canadian artisans, she says, “is to make sure the knowledge is not lost.”
Photo courtesy La Maison Simons
The brands featured at the pop-up, housed in a two-level space in Toronto’s Queen West neighbourhood, represent Canada from coast to coast with artisans hailing from Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and more. Visitors to the pop-up will find home decor objects like coasters and pots made from Quebec granite and marble by Lac-Drolet brand Atelier Bussière ; pewter, resin and glass-based jewellery from Montreal brand Anne-Marie Chagnon; and knit bucket bags by Toronto brand Hoi Bo.
Other offerings at the pop-up span skincare, leather goods, textiles, stationery, artwork and eco-friendly children’s toys as well as some artisanal food products like Bals Provisions’ Boozetella, a red wine-infused take on Nutella. The pop-up runs from Thursday, September 26 to Sunday, September 29 and even offers free mini-facials on Saturdays courtesy Toronto-based organic skincare brand Province Apothecary.
“Fabrique 1840 is not a market plan. It’s not a platform. It’s a community built around the idea of artisans thriving and not being encumbered or indentured by certain aspects of today’s new economy,” Simons’ president Peter Simons told Women’s Wear Daily at the time of its launch. With this pop-up, Simons is bringing that thriving online community to shoppers IRL, encouraging them to buy local and support homegrown talent.
The pop-up is on from 11am to 9pm on September 26 and 27, 9am to 6pm on September 28, and 10am to 4pm on September 29 at 950 Queen Street West.
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