If you haven’t shopped in New York recently, you’re in for a surprise on your next visit. The city that never sleeps has changed markedly in the past few years. The shops are more crowded than ever, thanks partly to tourism and partly to the increased population, as super-highrise blocks start to stab its skyline. New hotels have opened up new neighbourhoods, so there are more pockets of shops to visit than ever before. More shops deliver to your hotel than ever. And – the mallification of Manhattan has begun.
More than any other American city, New York has always been famous for the one-off independent stores and landmark department stores that line its architecturally magnificent streets. They’re one of the joys of shopping in the city: as you dip in and out of this store or that, you’re constantly aware of the visual glories of the city. Although malls are an American invention, they’ve never taken hold in the US shopping capital – partly perhaps because Manhattan is an island and thus has limited scope for sprawling expansion. The closest New York came to a mall was in the collection of rarely busy stores that once lined the lower ground floors of the World Trade Center buildings, forever being ignored by the speed-walking commuters rushing by. But 2004 saw the opening of 10 Columbus Circle, a glossy 46,451- square-metre mix of shops, restaurants and entertainment venues developed by Gulf Related – the same company behind The Galleria mall in Abu Dhabi – on the prime central site of a long-disused fire station. And, after a quiet start, the enthusiasm with which the city’s locals and visitors alike have taken to Columbus Circle – open seven days a week, 10am to 10pm or later and home to a massive basement Whole Foods as well as upmarket anchors such as Diptyque (selling the famous candles at $60 [Dh220]: “Less than in Paris!” claims a sales assistant) – has kicked off a mall boom.
New York bargains
New York is rivalled only by London as home to the planet’s greatest density of alluring, stock-everything and sell-it-with-a-smile stores. Prices these days won’t make you start hyperventilating like they did 10 or 15 years ago. But they’re still better than in London.
In Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s (where non-residents get an extra 10 per cent off prices with the in-house discount card), Converse Jack Purcell men’s trainers are a bargain at around $69 (Dh253) and the Nike Air Max Women’s a third cheaper than in London at $110 (Dh404). In sports stores you can pick up great buys such as a Head Graphene Speed Rev tennis racket, £125 (Dh705) in London stores, for Dh415.
In Bloomingdale’s, Clarisonic Mia sonic facial cleansing brushes – £125 (Dh705) in London – are Dh350. Knee-high furry Ugg boots, £190 (Dh1,070) in London, are routinely $185 (Dh679) here. In Duane Reade pharmacies, Boots No 7 Protect and Perfect cream, £23 (Dh130) in London, costs Dh74. At Walgreens pharmacies, Crest Whitestrips – as effective at whitening teeth as the dental trays for which UAE dentists charge so exorbitantly – cost just $28 (Dh103) for 12 treatments.
In Sephora stores, US brands such as Clinique, Estée Lauder and Bliss are markedly cheaper than in Europe. Electrical equipment – cables, memory sticks and the like – is always a good buy. And above all, of course, fashion-driven New York is a place to shop for clothes.
Whether in the designer boutiques of Madison Avenue from 57th to 82nd streets, where designer names such as Etro and Lanvin and Ralph Lauren, which now dominates Madison at 72nd Street, stand shoulder to shoulder with multi-brand curated stores such as every woman’s favourite Fivestory; or on Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 57th which, along with the giant H&M, Nike and Disney stores, is becoming home to ever more designers, Valentino being the latest with a big glass palace on 55th as well its shop on Madison – the variety is fabulous and the prices never higher than in Europe.
Scarily chic Barney’s is still the go-to store for frighteningly priced clothes, cosmetics and skincare from every top design name but now it devotes much space to children’s and baby clothes, too, which tells you something about how much money there is sloshing around NYC.
Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth and 58th, haunt of the gaunt, is where old money still shops, and if you want flair and a famously honest opinion the city’s surest-eyed stylist, Betty Halbruich, still works here – at 80-plus. In Soho, Otte has become the fashion go-to, along with Isabel Marant. And Net-a-Porter is soon to open a physical store.
The best buys, with prices at least 30 per cent below those in Europe, are of course American labels, from designers such as Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Vera Wang, Zac Posen, Jason Wu, Alexander Wang, Marc Jacobs and Levi’s to chains such as American Republic, Banana Republic and sassy J Crew. At the latter, the pricing policy seems to be to just switch the currency sign, so the sweater marked £78 (Dh440) in London is $78 (Dh286).
Opposite the World Trade Center memorial, Century 21 still rewards the dogged bargain-hunter with slashed prices on designer items: a Lanvin cream blouse marked down from $1,226 (D4,503) to $185 (Dh679), for instance. (I got that, and am still hugging myself for such top hunter-gathering, but there’s always some pleasing dose of serendipity to be had there.)
New York’s one-off independent stores: books, household goods and cameras
The overlit emporium of everything electronic that is the B&H Photo Superstore at Ninth Ave at 34th Street is arguably the single best New York one-off. Cameras, phones, tablets: this is where to find every conceivable model and at the best price anywhere. A Pentax K-3 DSLR with an 18-135 mm lens that costs around £1,449 (Dh8,167) in London, for instance, can be had for under $1,000 (Dh3,673) here.
While the independent bookshops such as the deliciously sinister little Murder Ink and its ilk that once dotted the city have all but disappeared and that literary megastore and source of serendipity Strand Books, founded in 1927, still thrives at Broadway and East 12th Street. Its fashion and decorative arts sections are especially drool-making. Pre-browsing fortification via coffee and a macaroon from the huge farmers’ market, held each Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 8am to 6pm, two blocks up on Union Square, is recommended.
And some one-offs have done well enough to expand. On the Upper East Side, Gracious Home, longtime faint-making purveyor of everything from classic to quirky crockery, every type of bedlinen on the market and 1,001 kinds of doorknobs, now has three other locations in the city, including the Upper West Side and Chelsea. On the Upper West Side, the beloved New York food emporium Zabar at Broadway and 80th also has an irresistibly well-stocked houseware department, with old-fashioned items such as wooden coffee grinders among the modern gadgets.
And on Bleecker, the engaging little Korean-owned store Think Closet, restocked weekly from Seoul, now has three other stores, selling one-offs around a bargain $100 (Dh367).
Sweetie stores
Even passing by and sniffing the air is likely to induce sugar-shock. Enter, and the strongest will is done for. The success of Dylan’s Candy Bar, launched by Ralph Lauren’s daughter Dylan as a knock-your-socks-off New York one-off at Third Avenue at East 60th, and now a US-wide chain expanding into airports, too, kicked off the trend for sweet shops. Designer du jour of the early 1990s Cynthia Rowley, for instance, still has a boutique on Bleecker Street in the West Village but just down the street her boudoir-like sweet shop is often even busier. No prices are displayed, but misgivings about what this might signal are misguided, deliciously enough. At 30¢ (Dh1.10) for a delectable three-mouthful cluster of white chocolate and marshmallow, for instance, or $16 (Dh59) for a retro tin of salted caramel popcorn, prices are a bargain. On Broadway and East 13th, the headily fragrant Max Brenner Chocolate Bar & restaurant (plus shop, with the cheering motto “Life Is Short, Eat Dessert First”) looks like a set from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, with its overhead pipes suggesting chocolate being sped this way and that. A chocolate fondue tower for two costs $15.50 (Dh57); a Hug Mug designed for drinking hot chocolate, $9.90 (Dh36).
Sales and sample sales
Everything moves fast in New York, prices included. Department stores start to mark down unsold clothes within four weeks of the pieces arriving, with Bergdorf Goodman noted for its sales racks (present year-round but unobtrusively tucked away on the fringes of each department). Barney's is famous for its twice-yearly warehouse sales, held off-site in January and July/August, with massive markdowns rewarding the tougher, battle-hardened shopper. And each month sees some sort of designer-store sale, with nycinsiderguide.com and nyracked.com the best sources of dates. January usually sees Fivestory (the Upper East Side cult-favourite multi-brand boutique) and L K Bennett as well as Barney's sales; February, Theory and Ralph Lauren Home; March, ABC Carpet & Home; April, Frette and Jimmy Choo; May, Manolo Blahnik; June, Fendi and Dolce & Gabbana; July, Stella McCartney; August, Alexander McQueen; September, Hermès; October, Prada, YSL and Loro Piana; November, Christian Louboutin and Valentino; December, Tory Burch and Diane von Furstenberg. As New York is still a manufacturing centre, its designer sample sales can be thrilling affairs, too. The best are never advertised (and the men in sandwich boards that infest Soho, apparently advertising such sales, should be ignored since disappointing prices and stock are guaranteed), but Time Out New York magazine, and nyracked.com all carry details. Meanwhile Woodbury Common, an hour's bus ride from Manhattan, operates year-round as the world's largest designer outlet. Discounts rise to 65 per cent at 220 stores, including Burberry, Coach, Gucci and Nike (premiumoutlets.com). Buying a NYCO&Co pass gets you shop discounts as well as free entry to museums – which also have fertile hunting grounds in their great shops.
Where to stop for coffee
New York always has a just-opened must-try restaurant, for which the dining section of the daily New York Times is the place to look. The 16th-floor rooftop restaurant and bar of the city's newest hotel, the Knickerbocker, on Times Square, is one such, its food directed by chef Charlie Palmer of the Aureole restaurant, across the street at 135 West 42nd. For a classic afternoon tea during a Fifth Avenue marathon, there's the rooftop Salon de Ning at The Peninsula at West 55th and Fifth or, downtown, the jewel-box of a cafe in ABC Carpet & Home. And on East 64th, the dark, old-New York lounge of the Plaza Athenee is the place to sink into a velvet armchair and recover from an onslaught on Madison Avenue. When it comes to cafes, though, the best for that only-in-New-York feel are the scruffy old cafes and those diners that come with vinyl booths, dying plants and world-weary waitresses. In Soho, bare-brick-walled Le Petit Cafe is straight out of a Woody Allen film: French chanson soundtrack, grimy bathroom, arty-looking waitress. It does just the classic snacks, perfectly executing various omelettes, pancakes and toasted bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon, with many items around the Dh45 mark and coffee, as everywhere, at $4.50 (Dh16.50). In the West Village the heavily Italianate Caffe Reggio at 119 Macdougal Street, set up in 1927, claims to have the oldest Italian coffee machine in America. In Chelsea there's the 1946 Empire Diner, at 210 10th Avenue. Midtown has La Parisienne, at 910 Seventh Avenue at 58th, "serving comfort food to NYC and the world since 1965". Its porridge can be revoltingly lumpy but its Eggs Benedict, $12 (Dh44), are half the price and just as nice as those at the Brooklyn Diner around the corner on West 57th. The Upper West Side has Tom's Diner – featured in Seinfeld – at 2880 Broadway. And the guidebook Discovering Vintage New York, available on Amazon, lists plenty more.
Where to stay
Downtown was where it was at a few years ago, thanks to the opening of cool hangouts such as The Crosby Street in Soho and Robert de Niro’s Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca. But the launch of the quirkily youthful Ace hotel on West 29th and glamorous NoMad on West 28th switched the focus to midtown. And with the opening in summer 2014 of the Park Hyatt’s wondrous new flagship hotel at 153 West 57th, opposite Carnegie Hall, a 90-storey new build and the most luxurious five-star hotel to open since the Mandarin Oriental arrived on Columbus Circle more than a decade ago, midtown once again feels the essential place to stay. It’s a top spot for shopping, with Columbus Circle, Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue all minutes away by foot, and three subway stations close by to speed one everywhere else. Given the horrendous traffic that is now a feature of Manhattan, that’s important.
Unofficial HQ of Fashion Week and an everyday fashion-editor favourite, the Park Hyatt occupies one of the needle-thin, super-tall new buildings that are set to transform the Manhattan skyline in the next decade. Thrilling views, high ceilings throughout, a spectacular spa, and bedrooms where the windows open, an iron and ironing board awaits in one of the closets, the beds are such that you never want to get up and the spacious bathroom has every delight going, from a mirror-embedded TV to a deep bath and a non-mist mirror in the steam shower help explain why every other five-star hotel in the city has been losing guests to the Park Hyatt.
It's not quite perfect, though. While the bar-lounge is fun – it's a lively evening hangout for the local fashion crowd – the restaurant can be disappointing at breakfast. Just over $60 (Dh220) for weak tea, overly hard granola and a fish platter – that oddly includes roast potato – felt about $45 too much. Rooms are from $700 (Dh2,920), including tax (001 646 774 1234; parkhyattnewyork.com).
A block away at 120 West 57th, the equally new Viceroy isn't in the same category – for a start, it's one of those single-room-residence conversions. But as a friendly spot with great views of Central Park from the higher floors, a rooftop terrace, and rooms lifted out of the drab with top quality beds and bed linen, it offers seriously good value. Rooms are a bit gloomy with their deco-era armchairs and brown and grey colour scheme (and cry out for a huge black and white poster of 1930s construction-era New York). Beside the coffee machine, though, is a Beats Bluetooth stereo and a delightful little collection of really good books about New York which will send you racing to get out and about. The hotel also has an upmarket if slightly soulless diner on the ground floor. Rooms from $415 (Dh1,524) including tax and breakfast (001 212 830 8000; viceroyhotelsandresorts.com).
Getting there
Emirates (emirates.com) has return flights to JFK from Dubai on its new A380s for Dh5,715; Etihad (etihad.com) has flights from Abu Dhabi, starting at Dh5,425 return. Both prices include taxes.
