Aritzia

Aritzia is a Canadian women's fashion company founded by Brian Hill in Vancouver in 1984, when he opened the first store at the Oakridge shopping mall on the city's south side. It is a clothing house rather than a lingerie maker. It designs and sells its own labels through more than 140 boutiques in Canada and the United States and online, and its place in an underwear encyclopedia comes from the close-fitting end of that range: bodysuits, knit tops, loungewear and the other pieces worn right against the skin.

A Vancouver mall store that became a design house

The Oakridge shop of 1984 was a retail business first. Over the following decades Hill turned it into what the company now calls a design house, one that writes its own product and sells it under a stable of in-house names instead of buying other people's brands for its shelves. That stable is long and slightly baffling to newcomers: Wilfred, Wilfred Free, Le Fou by Wilfred, TNA, Golden, Talula, Babaton, The Group by Babaton, 1-01 Babaton, Sunday Best, Main Character, Community and Super Puff, plus handbag lines such as Auxiliary, launched in 2014.

Each name is meant to speak to a different mood or customer, and in the stores the labels hang side by side. That is the whole trick. A shopper moves between price points and styles without leaving the building, and every sale stays in the family.

Aritzia's crossing into the United States

For more than twenty years Aritzia was a Canadian story. The first American stores opened in November 2007, in Seattle and in Santa Clara, California. Growth south of the border was slow at first. By January 2021 the company counted 101 stores in North America, 68 of them in Canada (including standalone TNA, Wilfred and Babaton shops) and 33 in the United States.

The count has grown since. The investor site now speaks of more than 140 boutiques across North America.

Public company, new chief executive

Aritzia listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange on October 3, 2016, under the ticker ATZ. Its revenue in fiscal 2022 was reported at about C$2.2 billion. In May 2022 Jennifer Wong became chief executive, taking over the role from the founder.

The company has also bought outside names. In June 2021 it acquired Reigning Champ, a Vancouver label of athletic basics, for about C$63 million. That deal fits the pattern. Aritzia buys or builds labels that sell well-made basics at a mid-to-upper price, not trend pieces at the bottom of the market.

Where the intimates fit

Aritzia does not run a bra business on the scale of Aerie or Victoria's Secret, and it does not sell itself as a lingerie brand. Its relevance here is narrower. The company's best-known close-fitting pieces are bodysuits and stretch tops cut in smooth jersey knit, worn on their own or under jackets, and they compete for the same customer and the same drawer as shapewear-adjacent basics from Skims. Loungewear and sweatsuits sit at the other end of the same idea: clothing for the hours when comfort comes first.

That is why the encyclopedia tracks the brand. Its records here are garments that overlap with intimates in fabric and fit, not a catalog of bras and briefs, and they should be read that way.

The "Everyday Luxury" formula

The company's registered slogan is "Everyday Luxury," and its investor material describes the aim as "beautifully made clothes" and "exceptional experiences." In practice that means prices above the mall average and stores built to feel like a step up from the food court outside. It is a formula that has worked for a long time. A company that started as one shop in a Vancouver mall still runs its North American business from the same city, forty years on.

Last updated October 7, 2026