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Brian Hill, the founder of the multibillion-dollar clothing company Aritzia, was visiting one of his boutiques, and, as usual, everyone was in a panic.
Corporate visits are common in retail, but Hill’s standards were high, not only for things like whether a store’s lighting perfectly accentuated the clothes, but also for the people who worked for him, the vast majority of whom were women.
On this visit, Hill assembled a group of employees near the front of the Toronto store and gestured to a nearby Victoria’s Secret plastered with photos of lingerie-clad models. “Why aren’t we hiring people who look like that?” he asked, according to a former employee who was present. (A spokesperson for Aritzia told Insider that Hill “has never made any comments or directives regarding hiring employees based on their race or body type.”)
Hill could get away with these kinds of comments. For 38 years he ruled over Aritzia as CEO, growing the Vancouver-based company into a fashion behemoth that generated $2.2 billion Canadian dollars, or about $1.7 billion, in revenue last year and ranks as Canada’s fifth-largest retailer of footwear and apparel, according to Euromonitor International. Under Hill, Aritzia positioned itself as Zara’s chic older cousin, producing minimalist garments in lush, monochrome fabrics with elevated pricing to match (a dress runs $50 to $228, depending on the in-house label). Kendall Jenner, Meghan Markle, and Jennifer Lopez have all been photographed wearing the brand.
Hill, now 62, was in the business of creating an idealized world for his customers. Aritzia hired picture-perfect salespeople (preferably petite, stylish, conventionally beautiful white or Asian women, as young recruiters learned). His stores oozed luxury; Vancouver’s 13,000-square-foot flagship location features an 11-globe chandelier by Lindsey Adelman (the nine-globe version costs $32,400). Aritzia’s clothes became a kind of social currency, so much so that customers braved communal fitting-room mirrors and aggressive sales associates to get their hands on items like the $250 Super Puff jacket or the $148 Melina vegan-leather pants. “Everyone has some pieces of Aritzia in their closet,” said Isabel Slone, a journalist and culture critic in Toronto, describing it as the “inoffensive version of what’s stylish.”
Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
But behind Aritzia’s glamor and success was a culture that could be high-pressure and exploitative, some former employees said. Five people who worked at retail stores in Ontario between 2005 and 2019 said their managers asked them to rate their own or each other’s appearance from one to 10 in daily huddles. There was incredible pressure to sell; a former retail employee said she was once told to come into work despite having a gash on her forehead that required stitches. Aritzia could be particularly inhospitable for Black women. Two Black former style advisors (Aritzia’s term for sales associates) said that, on separate occasions, a store manager asked each of them to make her coffee the same color as their skin. Aritzia’s spokesperson said the company prided itself on its “inclusive culture” and “incredible diversity,” adding that Aritzia was “committed to maintaining a welcoming and inclusive work environment free from discrimination.” They said 54% of Aritzia employees and 60% of retail employees identified as BIPOC but declined to provide a breakdown of those statistics.
Insider spoke with 53 current and former Aritzia employees, several of whom said that while the world of fashion is notoriously cutthroat, working at Aritzia was particularly grueling. Many said this culture stemmed from Hill, who prioritized aesthetics above all else, obsessed over details as minute as the font color in presentations, and at times became so enraged that he yelled and threw things in front of his employees. (Some former employees said they signed confidentiality agreements as part of Aritzia’s employment and exit contracts, and many requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the company or Hill.) Six former employees compared working at Aritzia to being psychologically abused. “I think a lot of people in that organization feel worthless,” a former support-office employee who worked closely with Hill said. “They have been berated and degraded for so long.”
Not everyone had a negative experience at Aritzia. Carly Bishop, who was connected to Insider through Aritzia’s spokesperson, has been with the company for eight years, first as Hill’s executive assistant and now as the director of the office of the executive chair. She described Hill as an “incredibly loyal” leader who “has built amazing bonds with people.”
Aritzia’s spokesperson said the company’s success was a “direct result of its high-performance culture.” Hill, they said, is “an exacting CEO, just like that of any other highly profitable global company, but he is also notably devoted to fostering the careers and growth of his employees.” They added, “The allegations in this story are not representative of the company culture that Brian and his leadership team at Aritzia have fostered and built.” An employee survey provided by Aritzia and conducted last October concluded that “an impressive 77% of Aritzia’s employees would recommend working at the company to a friend or family member.”
Hill transitioned from CEO to executive chair in May 2022. He was replaced by the chief operating officer, Jennifer Wong, who’s been at Aritzia for 36 years. But current and former employees say he still oversees many aspects of the company.
“Hill is a megalomaniac in an ascot,” a former PR and influencer-marketing lead said. “He founded an entirely new language, way of working, and culture that revolves around him.”
From the start, Hill fashioned himself into a larger-than-life figure at Aritzia. In a 2013 interview, he said there wasn’t a single item manufactured by the brand that he hadn’t seen or touched, adding, “I’m the final approval process.”
Hill’s retail know-how runs in the family; his grandfather was an executive at a department-store chain before buying a dry-goods shop in Vancouver. Eventually he passed the family business on to Hill’s father.
After graduating from Queen’s University in Ontario, Hill moved home to Vancouver, where he launched the first stand-alone Aritzia location in the mid-1980s. Hill told Business of Fashion in 2009 that he “saw a market opportunity” for “young women who have significant disposable income but don’t want disposable clothes.”
Hill grew his business slowly. While fellow Canadian brand Lululemon ballooned from one store in 2000 to more than 650 in 18 countries by 2022, Aritzia has 114 stores in the US and Canada, with plans to open eight more within the fiscal year. “We’re not fast food — we don’t want to be everywhere,” Hill told The Globe and Mail in 2000. Instead, Aritzia paid premium rents on stores where income was high and foot traffic heavy. By 1987 the brand had gained enough cachet that when Wong, the future CEO, was turned down for a part-time sales job at the Oakridge store, she was so determined to work at Aritzia that she drove to the Robson Street location and was hired there instead.
Hill was a prudent leader. Aritzia designed its clothes based on pieces that sold well for high-end brands and a handful of fast-fashion brands. (The Aritzia spokesperson said this statement was “an insult to the hundreds of members of our design teams who create and develop all of our exclusive brands.”) The company didn’t offer extended sizing until 2020, when it announced that one of its in-house labels, Babaton, would offer up to size 18 on a “trial basis” in select stores and online. Until then, its largest size had been a 10/12. “We’re not sure it’s going to make a meaningful impact to our sales,” Hill said at the time, “but we think it’s the right thing to do for our customers.”
George Pimentel/WireImage
At Aritzia’s Vancouver support office — the company’s name for its corporate headquarters — Hill’s presence was everywhere. For a time, the commissary even offered a kale-and-celery BH Smoothie. Employees of stores that made the most sales on holidays like Boxing Day were rewarded with fake bills depicting Hill’s face that could be exchanged for real cash. When Wong became president of the company in 2015, the bills were changed to feature her photo.
Hill had exacting standards for how things were run. Heather McLean, the executive vice president of product who was also connected to Insider through Aritzia’s spokesperson, said Hill’s “leadership has consistently provided a clear vision and motivation for the team to strive for excellence.” Aritzia’s training manual — a copy of which Insider viewed — mandated that store managers provide “higher quality” food and drinks for employees, which meant food from places like the ubiquitous Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons was out of the question. “It has to be the best,” a former store manager said, or “Brian would freak out.”
Hill often arrived at the support office in a crisp white button-down and tailored jeans, his hair slicked back. People spoke in hushed tones when they saw him in the hallways, a former corporate employee said. Four former employees said Hill ruled through fear and intimidation. Meetings could be particularly tense; one person said people would lose sleep or feel physically ill before meetings with Hill. Using the wrong text color or font in a PowerPoint could derail an entire presentation, the former support-office employee who worked closely with Hill added. Saying the wrong word could be equally disastrous. “If you said ‘so many’ or ‘a lot,’ he would go off for five minutes about using facts,” a former support-office employee who was regularly in meetings with Hill said. “It definitely came across as public humiliation.” The Aritzia spokesperson disputed this characterization but said the company encouraged “the use of specific facts and quantitative language in our business discussions wherever possible, as would any successful public company.”
Once, when an employee pitched a creative concept that Hill thought missed the mark, he flew into a rage, tore a poster listing Aritzia’s design principles off the wall, and stood over the employee, pointing to each element on the poster while she read them aloud to the room, someone who witnessed the incident said. The spokesperson said this did not occur.
Other times, Hill would issue “tests,” ex-employees said. He once held up a pen and asked an employee, “What is this?” When she replied that it was a pen, he threw it, saying, “Wrong, it’s a blue pen.” The spokesperson said Hill “has never thrown a pen in this circumstance.”
“He just wants to see you fail publicly,” the former support-office employee who worked closely with Hill said, adding that Hill used these tactics “to essentially tear down somebody’s self-confidence, to a point where he knew he had full control over that person.”
Sometimes Hill’s outbursts were more extreme. Seven former employees recalled him screaming and swearing in meetings and huddles; they said that on occasion the person he was addressing trembled or cried. The spokesperson said Hill “has never screamed or sworn at employees” or “intentionally caused an employee distress.” Bishop, Hill’s former executive assistant, said Hill “challenges people” and pushes his employees to “be the best that they can be” but that she wouldn’t describe him as having a short temper.
Over time, Hill’s behavior became part of company lore, a former support-office employee said. “You can’t throw things in a meeting or intimidate or harass people without everybody knowing,” they said. “What I found unfortunate about it is that it becomes accepted.”
Hill was as particular about the people who worked at Aritzia as he was about the color of his pens. “He definitely plays a bit of a hot-or-not game,” a former style advisor said. “‘We don’t need to keep this girl; she’s not cute.’ ‘This girl can get promoted because she looks a certain way.'” A former retail-talent-acquisition specialist recalled discussing hiring Kendalls or Kourtneys — never Kylies or Kims.
During visits to Ontario stores, Hill would sometimes ask management to give raises to employees he thought were attractive or embodied the Aritzia “cool-girl persona,” two former employees said. (The spokesperson said Hill “has not and would not ever say something like this” and that all raises were based on merit.)
Hill’s fixation on looks helped inform how Aritzia’s stores were run day to day. The company evaluated its employees and job candidates with a framework called SMPS, which stood for style, motivation, personality, and smarts. Laminated posters listing these qualities hung in the back rooms of several Aritzia stores, former retail employees said.
Five people who worked at retail stores in Ontario between 2005 and 2019 said they had to rate their own — or their colleagues’ — appearances out of 10 in daily huddles, addressing where they fell short. No one was allowed to be a 10.
A former Canadian store manager said she once gave an employee a low rating for her style in a meeting. Her merchandise manager questioned the rating, she said, asking if the employee was “skinny or fat.” When the store manager replied that the employee was skinny, her merchandise manager told her to bump the employee’s style rating to an eight, she said.
“Automatically, if you’re skinny, you’re not going to be below a seven,” a former retail employee said. (The spokesperson said Aritzia “has never directed its boutique employees or managers to do this” and that this particular incident “would be wildly out of sync with company policy, and does not reflect the company values.” Aritzia, they added, no longer uses SMPS.)
Todd Korol/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Aritzia could be an even tougher place to work for Black employees, some of whom said they faced overt racism there. Two Black former style advisors in Toronto said that, on separate occasions, their manager sent each of them to buy her a coffee, telling them to add enough cream to make it the color of their skin. The spokesperson said Aritzia “is not aware of any incident like this” and “would have zero tolerance for the behavior described here.” Aritzia, they added, has “not received any complaints about this type of incident.”
Da’ani Jetton, 26, a former style advisor in New York City, resigned from the company in 2022 after working there for five months. She sent an email to HR saying Aritzia didn’t adequately support its Black employees. She said an HR representative emailed offering her an exit interview, but she didn’t respond. The spokesperson said Aritzia conducted an internal investigation into the matter but declined to share the company’s findings.
Jessica Porter, 30, who said she was the only Black employee at Aritzia’s Paramus, New Jersey, location in 2012, said she often spent most of her eight-hour shift steaming clothes and vacuuming, while other non-Black employees weren’t asked to do the same.
Candace Jerry, 29, a style advisor in New York City who worked for six months from 2021 to 2022, told Insider that instead of focusing on sales during her shift, she was often asked to work the register or take clothes from the fitting rooms back to the sales floor — tasks she generally saw assigned to women of color. Her managers would then berate her about falling behind on sales, she said, adding that she didn’t file a formal complaint because she wanted to tough it out until she found another job.
The spokesperson strongly disputed both Porter’s and Jerry’s characterizations, adding that Aritzia “has never assigned tasks to employees based on their race” and that “all employees play a role in maintaining our boutiques.”
In May, Anyango Juma Miguna, a former store employee at Aritzia’s boutique in Newmarket, Ontario, sued Aritzia and her former store manager. In the filing, which Insider reviewed, Miguna alleged that after four months working at Aritzia, she arrived for her shift on March 28, 2023, to find the manager waiting for her in front of the store. The manager, the filing says, blocked Miguna from entering, “shoved” her into a nearby hallway, and handed her a termination letter. The filing says that as the manager did this, she called Miguna a “‘dirty African’ who should not be working at Aritzia.” Out of 86 employees at that location, the filing says, Miguna was the only one who was Black. (In a statement of defense filed with the court on July 5, the store manager and Aritzia denied all allegations. Aritzia’s spokesperson told Insider the company “has eyewitness reports and CCTV footage which disproves these claims.”)
Aritzia’s cutthroat culture could create a sense of anxiety for a number of store employees. For some, working at the company became increasingly taxing as they competed for sales and tried to please higher-ups.
Many retail stores track employees’ sales, but for Aritzia’s style advisors, their sales per hour, or SPH, also determined which shifts they were assigned. (The spokesperson said sales performance was one of many factors that determined scheduling.) Hannah, a former style advisor in Toronto who asked that Insider withhold her last name for fear of retaliation, said her managers announced everyone’s SPH at the start of each shift. The person in last place, she said, would “try to get their SPH back up all day, even if that means cutting another girl down or forcing the customer to buy stuff that doesn’t look good on them.”
To get their numbers up, style advisors, who were paid hourly, sometimes clocked in late, skipped breaks, or clocked out early, losing wages in the process, eight former employees in various Canadian provinces said. The spokesperson said this “is not a common or condoned practice across our boutiques.”
Employees were expected to devote their lives to Aritzia. A former Ontario store manager said that shortly after she was hired, the manager of store operations asked if she had a boyfriend. When she said no, the manager of store operations replied, “Good, because Aritzia will be your significant other.”
Kaycelyn Pascual, who worked as a style advisor in Ontario in 2018, said she became ill after working an overnight shift. When she called out sick, her manager gave her a same-day deadline to hand in a doctor’s note — in person. “I said, well, that’s not possible, because I’m sick. It’s an hour away,” she said. Pascual said she asked if she could fax or send a photo of the note, but her manager said no. Pascual said she resigned that day. The spokesperson said Aritzia was not aware of this incident and was “looking into it.”
A former employee who worked both at the Vancouver support office and in a store told Insider she once had to get emergency stitches for a gash on her forehead. She told her manager she couldn’t come in or she would “literally get blood on the clothing.” Her manager tried to insist she work anyway, but she refused. (The spokesperson said Aritzia was unaware of this incident and that “the health and safety of our team members always comes first.”)
The executive vice president of retail was irate during one store visit when she noticed that only two of three registers were open. A screenshot of a group chat Insider viewed showed her texting employees: “Use the registers. Or I’m telling Brian to tear them out.”
“I always say if you make it long enough at Aritzia, you drank the jungle juice, and now you’re serving it to other people,” the former employee who worked at the Vancouver support office and in a store said.
It wasn’t just retail employees who felt the pressure to perform. Nadia Mahammed, who worked as a concierge (Aritzia’s term for a customer-service representative) from September 2021 to April 2022, said the company’s Toronto office had a dedicated “crying corner” (the spokesperson denied this) and called management “abusive.” Mahammed told HR that in just four months there, she’d missed her period twice because of job-related stress.
If you make it long enough at Aritzia, you drank the jungle juice, and now you’re serving it to other people.
A former benefits coordinator who worked at Aritzia’s Vancouver support office filed a case with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal accusing the company of discriminating against her on the basis of her mental health. She told Insider that her manager disparaged her appearance, telling her, “You don’t dress the part, you don’t look the part, you don’t speak the part.”
After going on disability leave for her mental health in August 2021, the former benefits coordinator was told she’d been fired because of a restructuring. Her case is scheduled for mediation on August 8. The spokesperson said Aritzia “takes our employees’ health and well-being seriously. We work hard to foster an inclusive, supportive work environment.”
In June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Aritzia received a smattering of negative press. Two Black former employees came forward saying they’d experienced racism while working there.
In a statement at the time, Hill said Aritzia management had spoken with current and former Black employees and that “investing in ourselves, holding ourselves accountable, condemning intolerance and injustice, and making sure that Aritzia is a place where all people can come and have successful careers” was a “top priority.” He said Aritzia had made an “internal investment of $1 million” in its diversity-and-inclusion program. Four former support-office employees said the company began casting more diverse and plus-sized models around this time.
Then, that fall, the first of two anonymous letters lambasting company culture was delivered to the support office. It was addressed to Hill and took aim at what the author called an “abusive” work environment. In the letter, viewed by Insider, the author identified Hill as “the primary abuser” and called him a “bully” who, having “succeeded in building a culture of fear and harassment,” disrespected his staff with “embarrassing tirades and shaming.”
The author signed the letter only as “P.” The spokesperson said Aritzia “strongly disputes the characterizations and allegations made in this letter.”
After the letter arrived, Aritzia began to limit who had access to Hill during his more unscripted moments. Meetings with Hill that once included as many as 60 people were cut down to a handful, four former employees said. (The spokesperson said some meeting sizes were reduced across the company during this time but denied the reductions were related to the letter.)
Hill transitioned out of his role as CEO in May 2022 but still serves as the board’s executive chair; a press release said he’d maintain “full-time functional area leadership of Product, Marketing, Real Estate Development, and Business Development.” In a call with investors that July, Hill spoke directly about the brand’s expansion plans and described himself as working in close partnership with Wong and Aritzia’s chief financial officer, Todd Ingledew. He remains Aritzia’s largest single shareholder. One current employee said most days Hill could be found at his usual table in the support-office commissary with his laptop and ring light, taking virtual meetings.
Four former employees said they regretted participating in Aritzia’s harmful culture during their tenure, even when they were simply following orders. One former support-office employee said she quit because she was morally opposed to how the company was run. The former support-office employee who worked closely with Hill said working at Aritzia was so detrimental to her self-confidence that it took her years to find her voice again and get her career back on track.
Aritzia’s reputation got around and, in at least one instance, scared away a top recruit. This person was flown from New York to Vancouver to interview for a creative-director role. He said an Aritzia employee recognized him while he was visiting the support office and messaged him on Instagram warning him not to take the job.
“It might seem like a nice opportunity,” he recalled the employee saying in a voice note, “but when you get here, you realize it’s hell on earth.” He said she told him to “run for your life.”
