askTO

I had a few interesting experiences when I went to buy suits for myself at seemingly high end clothing stores in Downtown Toronto. I definitely got weird vibes from the sales folks there which I want to describe here.

1. I visited Brooks Brothers a year ago to buy some formal clothing. So I shortlisted a few options and then proceeded to go to the trial room to try them. The salesman helping me approached me and told me that since it's covid, he cannot let me try on any of the clothes unless I planned on buying them for sure. But at the same time, I saw multiple people in the same store trying on clothes in the trial room as well as outside in the main store area! To add to this, he also made comments about how things could be out of my range when I didn't even tell him my range. I couldn't figure out what happened there so I just decided to leave.

2. Now today, I visited Harry Rosen in downtown Toronto. I walked in and this lady greeted me. I said I'm looking for suits for an upcoming wedding. So she signalled a guy standing at the counter to help me. He came and told her oh I cannot help him because I'm doing something. Then she said it's okay you can help him first. Then he fumbled a little and said oh I have this gentleman I'm helping inside. Then I just went to this other guy who was nice to me. He didn't even look at me or tried to ask someone else to help me but just tried to avoid in a obviously weird way. It weirded me out a little but I decided to ignore. While I was looking at suits, the guy who said he's helping someone else was still at his original spot doing nothing (so there was no gentleman he was helping).

Now I don't want to jump to conclusions and call it racism because of my skin colour. But there was definitely some sort of bias going on there. Is there some sort of a class thing going on in these stores that makes them only be nice to people who look rich or look a certain way? I'm a young professional who dresses casually in sneakers, shorts, t-shirt or polos. So both the times I visited these stores, I was not dressed formally.

My sample size is obviously very small but both times I've visited a fancy suit store, it hasn't been pleasant. Other than this, I really have never faced any kind of obvious or subtle racism so wanted to get that straight in case people start generalizing Toronto being a racist place.

Would love to hear what other people have experienced too!