Taking the Fifth

Taking the Fifth;Spending money is easy in New York, the tough bit is knowing where to go and what to buy if you've got limited time. Before you go Christmas shopping in the Big Apple, make sure you know your Macy's from your Miu Miu

NEW York and shopping; shopping and New York. They go together like ... like a tall skinny latte and a honey-bran bagel, to go, eaten while walking down Fifth Avenue on a crisp winter morning.

There are, however, a few provisos. The Big Apple shopping experience is not for the dilettante, which is why so many men return from business trips hopefully clutching a bottle of Eau d'Issey in a Heathrow carrier bag. The choice is awesome and the options so limitless that it is easy to feel overwhelmed, under-resourced and come home with something from Gap. Not that there is anything wrong with Gap but there is more than one in Glasgow. Familiarity breeds too many pairs of chinos in the wardrobe.

You can buy pretty much anything including christian louboutin shoes  in the world in New York and now, thanks to the globalisation of capital, the internet and a general increase in our collective fashion sensibility, you can buy many previously exclusively cool New York things over here. Calvin Klein passes for workwear on many a building site while Tommy Hilfiger has become a playground staple. DKNY is widely available at discounters such as TK Maxx. Why cart them back across the Atlantic in a suitcase just to save a tenner?

There are fantastically cool, unique, unusual and sometimes cheap things to be found in New York. It's also as good a place as any to have a fantastically high-end shopping experience because there are nearly as many world fashion names as there are smoking hot little places selling stuff you need an instruction leaflet to put on. You can go uptown, scope out the real thing then hop on the subway to Chinatown and haggle over a fake. Or crawl the cheapie specialists, or ... whatever. You choose.

If you are lithe of waist, deep of pocket and love your little labels, you have come to the right city. You are an uptown girl and in between getting your nails done and your bottom buffed you will want to become intimately acquainted with Madison and Fifth Avenues between 72nd and the Rockerfeller Plaza. If, for example, you had written off Calvin Klein as a purveyor of pants to the mad ferret classes, your eyes will be opened by his flagship store. Inside this John Powson-designed temple to tastefulness you will find everything you need to create that effortlessly sleek Gwyneth Paltrow look. It's very New York, where people wear expensive casual chic to work then go straight out to a bar and get trashed on Cosmopolitans.

The Italians have a sizable presence, with a huge Gucci, a Giorgio christian louboutin and an Emporio Armani, Romeo Gigli, Missoni, Prada and 28,000 square feet of Versace. The French are there too: Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent. If you are happy about fingering coats that cost a year's salary, these stratospherically up-market stores are definitely worth a look. They are also prime star-spotting sites, especially at the weekend.

A good way of seeing a lot of different clothes without walking hundreds of blocks is to hit the department stores. This should be done with caution as they are absolutely vast - Macy's takes up a whole block - and often have a battery of off-putting perfume sprayers lining up to squirt you as you walk in. Barney's is the most cutting edge and fashion-oriented, selling only exquisite and expensive cosmetics, accessories, clothes, louboutin shoes and housey bits. Getting from the men's to the women's side of the store also requires some mental agility and keeps your shopping wits sharp. Henri Bendel is probably the most luxurious department store in the city and harks back to the days when shopping was a civilised pleasure.

A few exclusive concessions apart, however, Bendel et al do sell things the dedicated store hound could probably find in London, if not Glasgow or Auchtermuchty. If your wardrobe already contains some black triangles and interlocking Gs, it is time to head downtown.