How to shop the world’s fashion capitals

New York's Seventh Avenue

Creative Commons / YanGarPhoto

NEW YORK

As with so much in New York, fashion here is an efficient and often ruthless process. Style is clean and sporty, with a glamorous, rock and roll edge – think luxurious minimalist pieces cut tight and short, this season with an ironic designer logo or two thrown in. The model-off-duty look was born in lower Manhattan, where street culture is about mixing grungy influences with something more classic to make for a pretty sort of mess. Never too messy, obviously.

The Mecca of Manhattan shopping
Alex Hunter / Alamy

Splurge: Barneys
Barneys is the absolute Mecca of Manhattan shopping. It’s vast and versatile, according to your tastes and your budgets. Stocking every major label, from Prada to Celine, it also boast one of the biggest selections of Rick Owens in the city – but be warned, those must-have softly washed leather jackets sell out at the very beginning of the season. It’s also great for end of season shoe sales – where prices on labels such as Balenciaga and Christian Louboutin often end up slashed in half.
660 Madison Avenue New York

Save: Century 21
Century 21, Manhattan’s largest designer outlet store, is only for serious shoppers. It’s a head-down-and-don’t-chat sort of place for those who know their labels and prefer to get them at 70% off. You’ll find American names for the most part – Helmut Lang, Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors – but expect Margiela, Westwood and Gaultier too and expect to rummage for them. The surroundings aren’t fancy, but neither are your motives. Best attempted alone.
472 86th Street, Brooklyn

Stay: The Standard Highline
A favourite with the hip globetrotter set and fashion week drop-ins.
848 Washington at 13th Street

LONDON

The fashion scene in London is as diverse and eclectic as the city’s 8 million inhabitants. No one scene can be said to have triumphed – from the Portobello princesses of the west, all Matthew Williamson and posh parkas, to the hipsters of the east and the south, and the goth urchins of Camden in the north. It makes for a vibrant shopping experience though, where the rules of engagement change according to which point of the compass you’re at.

London's newest hotel and its best vintage store
London Edition Hotel / Rellik

Splurge: LN-CC
A concept store in is truest sense, LN-CC (Late Night Chameleon Café) lies just behind the main drag of Dalston in London’s East End and you’ll need to make an appointment to get in. This isn’t a snooty test of your mettle though – it’s because the space, created by set designer Gary Card, is small and worth appreciating without too many others to distract you. LN-CC boasts an incredibly well curated selection of brands, from Haider Ackermann and Dries van Noten to JW Anderson, and a room full of so much obscure Japanese streetwear, its cool credentials are basically unrivalled in the Western world.
18 Shacklewell Lane

Save: Rellik
Just underneath the striking Trellick Tower in Ladbroke Grove lies the city’s finest vintage store. It’s about as far from a Salvation Army outlet as you can imagine, so the prices aren’t rock bottom, but you’d be hard pressed to find some of the pieces here, well, ever. Anywhere. Find 1982 Vivienne Westwood Pirates pieces, late 80s Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garcons, 90s Jil Sander – Rellik is where London’s designers come for inspiration.
8 Golborne Rd

Stay: London Edition
One of the newest hotels in the city, the London Edition combines classic and cool with its sumptuous surroundings and lively club night rota.
10 Berners Street

MILAN

An idiosyncratic mix of high fashion and hard business, Milan is a city where creativity and commerce collide. It also means however, that you have to search a little further from the beaten track to find this city’s best and most stylish haunts, whether you’re looking for the designer piece of a lifetime (all too many to choose from) or the biggest and best bargain you can tell all your friends about.

Shop in Milan's drawing room
Creative Commons / greenmarlin

Splurge: Galleria Vittoria Emanuele II 
If you needed persuading to shop in Milan’s largest Galleria (four storeys high, double width) try this: McDonalds was recently turfed out of it after 20 years of occupancy to make way for a second Prada store. Known as ‘Milan’s drawing room’, this is the ultimate destination for shopping across the spectrum, from Zara to haute jewellery – not forgetting the city’s finest pastry shop, Biffi Caffe.
Piazza Duomo

Save: Marni Outlet
Off the beaten track but worth the detour, Milan’s Marni outlet store often cuts prices by up to 80%, and the observant fashion follower will clock pieces that are only a season old. It really is the pick of one of Italy’s most beautifully cool and crafted labels at the moment and while the prices might not be Topshop low, they’re still a heck of a lot less than you’ll see anywhere else.
1 Via Filippo Tajani

Stay: Corso Como apartments
Milan’s most exclusive boltholes are the three apartments located above boutique 10 Corso Como, usually taken up by international buyers or fashion designer friends of the store owner Carla Sozzani.
10 Corso Como

PARIS

The home of fashion, despite young and hip pretenders to that throne, Paris straddles both high and low. Choose from the hushed ateliers of Dior and Chanel who ply their trade to private couture clients from thickly carpeted salons, or the bustle of the Marais. It’s packed to the rafters with vintage stores and French brands such as Sandro, Maje and The Kooples, which have successfully tapped into the collective conscious in the past few years.

Serge Lutens: a bouquet boutique
© Hemis / Alamy

Splurge: Serge Lutens 
The scent shop to end all scent shops. Serge Lutens is an alchemist of fragrance, creating elevated and rarefied scents from the finest and most unusual ingredients and combinations that nevertheless become modern classics among the cosmetics cognoscenti. His boutique in Palais Royal is well worth a visit. Just don’t going spraying the testers about everywhere – it isn’t that kind of place.
142 Galerie de Valois

Save: Colette
It might seem crazy, sending you to one of the city’s most exclusive fashion boutiques in the name of bargains, but hear me out. Beyond the fabulous and top-end labels available here, there are hundreds are more accessibly priced objets to be had too, of a standard that isn’t found just anywhere. So take advantage of Colette’s intrepid buying team, who bring you everything from the best Harajuku trinkets (a miniature Karl Lagerfeld doll perhaps) to a wide-ranging selection of fashion publications that you might never have come across before. Who said bargain hunting meant bargain basements?
213 Rue Saint-Honoré

Stay: La Maison Champs Elysees
With trompe l’oeil interiors designed by Maison Martin Margiela, this hotel draws a crowd of avant-garde aficionados.
8 Rue Jean Goujon