I had a very interesting conversation with a Calvin Kleiner this morning as we were waiting for the company’s pre-collection show to start. He had just come back from their latest store opening — at a mall in Toronto.

“Toronto?” quoth I, dubiously. “Is that a big market for Calvin Klein?”

Now before anyone gets huffy about this, I would just like to say: I am married to a Canadian and spend many happy weeks a year in Canada — in fact, I’ll be there soon — but in all the conversations I have in my working life about fabulous luxury/fashion markets, like it or not, the country rarely comes up. In fact, I can remember only one other time, a year ago, in a conversation with Luxottica when the execs said Canada was a very fashion-forward market for sunglasses.

But anyway, here’s what the Calvin Kleiner said: “It’s really, really successful. People spend so much time talking about China, and the BRICs, and Asia-Pacific, but Canada is ten times bigger a market for us than Vietnam. It’s really important — and growing.”

It’s true, when luxury brands bang on about opportunity in North America there is often an implicit assumption on the part of the listener that this means the United States. But maybe it really means Canada, which is clearly under-served (it may be a good market for CK, for example, but they still only have four stand-alone stores in the country).

Certainly, J Crew, which opened its first stand-alone store in Toronto in August, also reports very high demand and sales and I’ve been hearing lots of buzz about what Bonnie Brooks has been doing at the preppy basics department store megalith The Bay, with The Room, a high-end designer space. Plus of course, Joe Fresh, the Canadian more-accessible-Abercrombie, has now penetrated south of the border, in NY, to a fair amount of hoo-ha.

It’s something to keep an eye on, anyway. As is another emerging market where Louis Vuitton and Tiffany just opened with high hopes: Mongolia.

I kid you not.