Shopping on the hop
Spectator, The, Oct 24, 2009 by Metcalf, Charlotte
Writer and broadcaster Amanda Platell reveals her favourite shopping spots in New York, Western Australia and Italy
Christmas shopping can feel as if you’re buying a gift just because you have to – I’d rather wait six months till I find the right thing. I like heading for New York in late November where I know I’m going to find presents people will like.
Abercrombie & Fitch is the best place to buy clothes for teenagers. You’ll find something there you can’t find in the UK and it will score you Brownie points. I also go to Ralph Lauren as my Dad loves their pale blue shirts and they have nice dressinggowns for girlfriends. It’s so much cheaper than it is here that it’s practically worth the fare.
As we enter mid-life, most people I know have everything they want so it can be tricky finding something unusual. Apart from being a museum, the Guggenheim has a shop, and if someone you know likes a particular painter or style of architecture, you can find beautiful and unusual coffee-table books.
I always go home to Australia for Christmas. In the south-west of funny halloween costumes Western Australia is the Gunyulgup Gallery attached to a lakeside restaurant with its own vineyard and olive oil press.
The gallery showcases West Australian artists at affordable prices and also sells jewellery, linen and knives with beautiful hand-carved bone handles and forged blades that are like something out of Lord of the Rings, and make great gifts for men.
Perhaps my favourite shopping destination is Italy.
I like to start in Rome in late October. I head first to Myla near the Spanish Steps and buy the most elegant, sexy underwear in the world. French underwear is rather constricting, but the Italians understand about bosoms, waists and bottoms. Then I drive up to Casoli, a mediaeval hilltop fortified town in Abruzzo.
In the old town I go to Ottica del Ossa. At the front of the shop are rows of modern sunglasses, but when you suggest you want something else they nod and bring out a drawer of breathtaking vintage sunglasses in mint condition that could have been worn by Gina Lollobrigida and Steve McQueen themselves.
Casoli also has a street market selling linen: gorgeous cotton checked tablecloths in a traditional Abruzzo weave that make much nicer gifts than anything from Cath Kidston.
About 20 minutes on is Quadri, a village devoted to truffles. They put truffles into everything – olive oil, honey, cheese, candles. How cool to give someone who has everything an Abruzzo truffle! I love Jo Malone, but to open a truffle candle that has come all the way from Italy is so much more personal