High-end stores including Alexander McQueen, Jimmy Choo, Bulgari and Emporio Armani will be launching on September 4 after Abu Dhabi's first exclusively luxury shopping mall on Al Maryah Island opens this month.
Al Tayer Group, the company that owns the franchise to dozens of luxury brands in the UAE, said it would be launching 15 stores on that date at the 33,000 square metre The Galleria shopping centre linked to Mubadala Developments' Sowwah Square office complex. Mubadala is a strategic investment company owned by the Abu Dhabi Government.
Stores operating under Al Tayer franchises at the centre also include Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Coach, Pucci, Moschino and the Emporio Armani Bakery.
But the jewellery brand Boucheron, which is also franchised by Al Tayer, will open later in the year.
The news comes as Mubadala and Gulf Related, the joint developers of the 121-store mall, prepare for a soft opening of the mall this month.
The partners said more than 100 luxury stores would open their doors at the end of this month, a number of which are currently only found in Dubai.
"Final preparations are under way for the opening of The Galleria," said Kenneth Himmel, the co-managing partner of Gulf Related, and the president and chief executive of the American-based retail property firm Related Urban, the developer behind the Time Warner Centre in New York.
"With all units fully leased, we are working closely with retailers as a specific opening date is finalised for the coming weeks," he said. "We anticipate that over 100 of our retail and F&B outlets will be operational on opening day."
Other stores set to open in The Galleria include Burberry, Cartier, Christian Dior, Christian Louboutin, Dolce & Gabbana, DKNY, Fendi, Gucci, Longchamp, Mulberry, Prada, Tom Ford and Yves Saint Laurent.
Restaurants will include an offshoot of the London-based celebrity haunt Zuma.
The Galleria is the first of three new malls set to open in Abu Dhabi over the second half of this year. It will be followed by the 60,000 square metre Mall at the World Trade Centre attached to Central Market, which will include the region's first House of Fraser store and the delayed Deerfields Townsquare community mall on the outskirts of the capital.
And in March the long-awaited 235,000 square metre Yas Mall super regional shopping centre is set to bring even more retail to Abu Dhabi when it becomes the country's second-biggest shopping mall.
At the same time construction work is set to start on the Tourism Development and Investment Company's 168,000 square metre luxury mall on Saadiyat Island, which is scheduled to complete in 2017.
And a 200,000 square metre Reem Mall on Reem Island, which was scheduled to complete last year, could bring the number higher.
Jones Lang LaSalle predicts the total retail space across Abu Dhabi will increase by 46 per cent from 1.78 million square metres at the start of this year to 2.6 million square metres by the end of 2015.