Shopping
Markets, boutiques and makers worth seeking out, city by city
Browse Shopping
From covered food halls and flea markets to independent boutiques and artisan studios, these are the shops and markets our local guides love around the world. Browse the picks below and filter by city and budget to find where to shop like a local.
Balti Jaama Turg is Tallinn’s most exciting market — a brilliantly reinvented food-and-flea market beside the Baltic railway station, on the edge of the hip Kalamaja district. A slick 2017 redevelopment turned…
★ 4.6
San Polo (near Rialto)
Why it matters: founded in 2003 by the Il Cerchio social cooperative, Banco Lotto N.10 is a working tailoring atelier inside the Giudecca Women’s Prison, where inmates learn dressmaking as a real trade and hand-cut and finish every garment sold. The little San Polo boutique near the Rialto Bridge sells the results: full-skirted, polka-dot 1950s-style dresses and jackets in silk shantung and fine wool, some from donated Fortuny and Bevilacqua fabric. Buying here funds training that many women carry into seamstress work after release. Ask the shop to help fit a dress to your size – most pieces run roughly 80-180 euros – and budget a few extra minutes to hear the story behind the workshop.
Kollupitiya (Colombo 3)
Barefoot has been Colombo’s most loved shop for over sixty years, a rambling old house on Galle Road filled with rainbow-bright handwoven cloth, a bookshop, an art gallery, and a shady garden courtyard cafe. Why it matters: founded in 1964 by artist Barbara Sansoni, who began designing cloth for rural weaving centres, Barefoot has provided steady work to generations of Sri Lankan women hand-weavers. Pick up a sarong, handloom toys, or fabric by the length, and browse one of the best bookshops in the city. Tip: it stays open every day, including Sundays and Poya days, and the courtyard cafe is the calmest lunch spot on this stretch of Galle Road.
The Bazar Sábado — the ‘Saturday Bazaar’ — is one of Mexico City’s most delightful weekend traditions, a beloved art-and-craft market held every Saturday in the cobbled, bougainvillea-draped colonial suburb of San…
★ 4.5
Bascarsija
Why it matters: founded in 2016 by Zana Karkin, who got tired of watching generic plastic souvenirs crowd out real Bosnian craft, this Bascarsija concept store is built as a hub for local designers and rural artisans – tanners in Visoko, wool workers, village women who knit and embroider folk costumes, jewellers working rare inlay techniques. Everything is made in BiH, in limited runs, and the makers are named. Look for the pieces that carry actual Bosnian history: Ina Cano’s ornaments drawn from the traditional tattoos of Bosnian Catholic women, or Kemil Bektesi’s collection built on the Neolithic Butmir culture. The Titova branch has closed – the Bascarsija shop is the one to find.
Williamsburg
Beloved buy-sell-trade secondhand store extending clothing’s life.
★ 4.6
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