Commuting and Shopping to Carrefour Laval

Like most Montrealers, I get around with BMWs (snazzy lingo for Bus Metro Walk) to get to point A to point B. However I noticed how obsessed people are about their commute time. How long are people willing to travel to shop?

I asked myself this question when it came upon trying out Carrefour Laval as my guinea pig location. The Carrefour Laval is famous being the gargantuan mall with over 200 stores on the northern island and most consider Laval to be “pretty damn far” due to inconvenient commuting roads. Since the completion of three new metro stops on the Orange line extending to Montmorency, I decided to give it a whirl to see exactly how long will it take to go there.

Commute time? 1h15 mins.

The starting point was my home, in the far east of Montreal on the Green Line; this commute included bus and walking as well. You might be able to shave off 15 mins if you’re really lucky and get everything on time. Also take note that you will have to spend a minimum of $7.50 (for a roundtrip) since Laval’s transportation system does not belong to the STM and the three new metro stations will charge you extra if you try to come back to Montreal from those stations.

Shopping in Carrefour Laval has its good points and drawbacks though.

The Good

1) During winter time, it’s a blessing to have everything in one single spot. You can shop for home improvement at their indoor Rona to buying daggers, swords and peasant clothing at medieval themed store La Table Ronde.

2) Laval’s Simons (pictured above) is perceptually larger as its store concept is much more open and square, and lacks the chaotic mess as the one downtown. It also boasts a very modern and attractive home and bath section full of colorful towels and rugs.

3) Indoor garden-like atrium, one time I saw macaws inside huge bird cages there.

4) A couple of very trendy home deco boutiques like Le Living (similar to Zone) and some quirky colorful ones like Farfelu.

5) They have an authentic Build-A-Bear workshop store, we have something similar called Univers Toutou (formerly Atelier Toutou) which extends to other animals other than bears, located in the Old Port.

The Not So Good

1) Bring good walking shoes, you’ll be there for a while.

2) Their H&M only has the uber trendy collections, none of that hip office look like the one I can find at the Rockland Center.

3) The Apple store isn’t all that fantastic unless you’re a computer/Apple fan.

4) You can pretty much find all of these stores in the downtown area.

So the novelty of being in the Carrefour Laval is that it’s just so darn huge. But fashion wise, there is little to attract outsiders looking for a good deal or a unique store. After a while it feels like a copycat Houston mall with Canadian labels, and there’s nothing fantastic about that.

If you’re willing to kill a lot of time, feel free to make the trip, but I doubt there would be any reasons for Montrealers to leave the island to go shopping elsewhere. It’s a shame though, it’d be nice if the shopping experience can be expanded to the city surroundings, it would make the commute feel more like traveling to a fun and different place instead of winding up to a place where you can get the same thing on the island.

H&M Prepares for Cavalli

On Nov. 8th, Roberto Cavalli’s collection will be released to the mass public in all H&M stores in and around the Montreal area. On H&M’s official website, we can really experience the full blown campaign advertisement of Cavalli’s collection, from surfing through the collection, to the 90 sec. commercial, to still ads, to reading his blog, and a 6 min. video interview splashed on full screen. Here we see Cavalli in a typical italian manner, cigar in hand, a deep Italian accent (with English subtitles in case you can’t understand him), large jewelry, and an open black collar shirt. He rattles on about his experience with H&M, how he went about creating his collection, who it is for, and who should be wearing his clothes.

Get Ready To Rumble

A word to the wise, if you even think about lining up only an hour before the doors open on Thursday, think again. In the past and around the world, shoppers experienced a shocker when they found a huge lineup outside H&M’s doors as early as 5 in the morning.

In 2005, it was Stella McCartney. Liz Jones from the Evening Standard in London covered her experience at H&M. She arrived 8am, the doors didn’t open until 9am and already there was a monstrous lineup. One nanny had arrived at 6:30am to buy a pair of trousers and a black dress. Most already knew what they were buying, some grabbed whatever they could and by 9:10am, the store was empty.

In 2006, Viktor & Rolf released their collection in New York, Kendall Herbst from New York Magazine described shoppers literally at war with one another. Women grabbing armloads of clothes and they didn’t care what they were getting. Shoppers sprinting, spinning, swapping, hell, it was chaos.

So if you have an eye on that leopard print silk dress, you better know your size and you better arrive early. Take no prisoners!

H&M stores around Montreal

All stores open between 10am and 9pm.

Rockland Centre
Galerie D’Anjou
Fairview Pointe-Claire
Mail Champlain
Carrefour Laval

**Please note that Cavalli’s collection will only be available at the Rockland Centre, sorry about that!