[4] Founded by Herschel Segal in 1959, as "Le Chateau Men's Wear", it began as a menswear store in downtown Montreal Victoria Square.

[5] This worked well, and within a few years, Le Château completely phased out the original traditional clothing style to concentrate on selling fashionable imports to youths.

Segal claims that Le Château was the first to introduce bell bottoms to Canada, and had the latest European fashion before it even arrived in New York City.

Le Château played an integral yet little known role in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1969 Montreal bed-in, providing the signature velour jumpsuits worn by the pair.

In the mid 90s, Le Château experimented briefly with Goth styled clothing and in 1997, it launched a short lived adolescent girls brand "Jr.

You cannot ignore its early expansion to the USA, successful at first but bad management caused a massive failure, the Chicago area locations were amazing until they were not.

That year, it released a collection based on the 1960s-set Renée Zellweger movie, Down with Love and was the exclusive supplier of clothing to Canadian Idol contestants.

[5] With many US retailers expanding into Canada, including competitor Express, and fast fashion stores such as H&M and Zara gaining market share, Le Château relaunched their brand in 2012.

[7] The company has recently experienced significant financial trouble, with losses of $35 million a year from 2014 to 2016, and has been forced to borrow from founder Herschel Segal.

[7] In July 2020, after several months of declining business, and hindered further by the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, Le Château stated there is "significant doubt" it will survive another year.

[16] In 2014, Le Château launched a partnership with "Dress For Success", a non-profit corporation to help economically disadvantaged women by providing them with interview attire.