Shopping in Lombardy & The Lakes
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Market stalls
Market stalls selling everything from fruit, flowers, pots, pans and clothes to useless clutter fill Piazzas Sordello, Broletto and delle Erbe and their surrounding streets on Thursday morning. More than a million pigs a year are reared in the province of Mantua. Try salumi (salt pork), pancetta(salt-cured bacon), prosciutto crudo (salt-cured ham) and risotto with the locally grown vialone nano rice.
Tortelli di zucca (sweet pumpkin-stuffed cushions of square pasta) is the city's most venerable dish, while risotto alla pilota (risotto with minced pork) and luccio (pike) also appear on most menus. Mantua is also renowned for its sweet specialities, including torta di tagli…
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Peck
Forget The Last Supper: gourmands head to the food and wine emporium, Peck. This Milanese institution opened its doors as a deli in 1883. Since then, it’s expanded to a dining room–bar upstairs and an enoteca (wine bar). The Aladdin’s Cave–like food hall is smaller than its reputation suggests, but what it lacks in space it makes up for in variety, with some 3200 variations of parmigiano reggiano (Parmesan) at its cheese counter, just for starters. Other treasures include an exquisite array of chocolates, pralines and pastries; freshly made gelato; seafood; caviar; pâtés; a butcher; fruit and vegetables; truffle products; olive oils and balsamic vinegar.
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Rinascente
Italy’s most prestigious department store doesn’t let the fashion capital down. Come for Italian diffusion lines, French lovelies and LA upstarts. (While it makes convenient one-stop shopping, there’s a disturbing disjunct between the swirling department store frenzy and the superluxe price tags.) The basement hides an amazing homewares department (Guzzini to iittala, and Italian-mama pots and pans for a steal) as well as a tax-back office for non-EU citizens. Up on the 7th floor, the Food Market will both feed you and tick gift to-buy boxes with its edible souvenirs, top-notch casual dining and gob-smacking views of the Duomo.
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Lula Cioccolato
In a city full of exquisite sweet things, hip and oh-so-pretty Lula is a standout. Purists prefer the simple slabs scattered with nuts or the jewel-coloured French jellies, while those of a more decorative bent snap up votive- and cornucopia-shaped chocolates. Flavours run from traditional to highly experimental. Seasonal creations include baroque Easter eggs and crystallised flowers for Christmas or St Valentines Day cakes, which really do make the heart beat faster. For extra gift oomph, there’s vintage cotton pouches or gold-centred bowls to fill.
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Art Book Milano
The multilevel gallery Massimo de Carlo is entered via a bridge that gives a full view of the stockroom innards. This Via Ventura pioneer is a must-see, for the stellar line-up of artists - Diego Perrone, Simone Berti, Pei-Ming Yan - as well as the architecturally thoughtful space. In the same complex is the ever-challenging Zero and Art Book Milano. Via Massimiano is home to Francesca Minini and Klerkx, both showing intriguing new-generation work.
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Zanotta
Zanotta has worked with the best (Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari and Ettore Sottsass to name a few) but is most famous for bringing the body-hugging, structure-free sacco, or beanbag, to the world, bang on time for postbarricade debriefs. Also of the same vintage and still in production is the Quaderna table, launched by antidesign outfit Superstudio in 1970, and pointedly made in cheap, gridded laminate to express, ah, ‘political disillusionment’. In comparison, current-day experimentation can come across as a little try-hard.
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Antonia Boutique
New-breed buyer Antonia Giancinti’s eponymous boutique mixes locals like Bottega Veneta with international labels like Lam, Lavin, Biba and McCartney in an urban, monochrome space that echoes her Carrie Bradshaw-ish aesthetic. Antonia Accessori ([tel] 02 869 0216; Via Cusani 4; [hrs] 3-7pm Mon, 10am- 7pm Tue-Sat; [tram] 1 [metro] Lanza) displays the same brash zeitgeistiness. Trust her, she’s a self-proclaimed shoe-victim (and she’s not talking bunions).
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Tom Ford
When Tom Ford took over Zegna’s old digs he didn’t skimp at putting his stamp on the place. A work by current artworld darling Anselm Reyle greets shoppers who are invited to join in a consensual hallucination that they’re just visiting a friend’s opulently decorated villa. There are actually five floors of madly masculine styling, all for sale. The top floors are reserved for made-to-measure clients, with a bar as well as private bitch’n’stitch lounges.
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E. Marinella
Looking for something to go with the John Lobbs? Naples’ legendary su misura (bespoke) tie-maker has finally made it to Milan. Heavy wooden drawers are filled with RTW silk beauties, subtly adorned with tiny flowers or geometric patterns. Once inside this elegant, private atelier though, you’ll be sure to want a precisely fitted six-fold wool-lined fat-knot number. Their advice: ‘the only rule is to follow the instinct’.
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Mauro Leoni
You knew there had to be a fun, original, wearable, inexpensive shoe maker in Milan, and Mauro's it. Metallic ballet slippers with an X marking the spot across the toe, 1940s pink wing-tip pumps, red polka-dotted grosgrain heels, and orange T-strap flats, all for less than around €75 - it's enough to make you forget all about that mean old Manolo and standoffish Jimmy Choo, and finally fall in love again.
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Berluti
A custom-made shoe for every man's passing whim: go Zen in profound seaweed-green leather, rock out in deep purple, or warm up in sun-bronzed ochre that's the essence of Italy. There's the occasional misstep, like wing-tips covered with Da Vinci code scribblings - but the streamlined, single-eyelet numbers don't miss a beat. Prices have more than adjusted for inflation since Berluti was founded in 1895.
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Serravalle Scrivia
Serravalle Scrivia is around 80km south of Milan on the way to Genoa. This Ligurian version of an outdoor SoCal-style mall, has faux two-storied streets and over 180 shops, including Frette, Dolce & Gabbana and Petite Bateau. The same coach company that services Fox Town also does Serravalle (return €15; www.zaniviaggi.it), or catch a local Milan-Genoa train to Arquata Scrivia.
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Aquae Calidae
You can't argue with the divine massages, but these ritualised Roman baths are sometimes too authentic. Instead of the usual bachelor party, this spa suggests a Roman-style cosy steambath with 10 of your closest buddies, and a 'farewell to spinsterhood' bachelorette party involving saffron tunics and nut-strewn floors. Um, is Greco-Roman wrestling allowed? Because that could get interesting.
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La Vetrina di Beryl
Barbara Beryl’s name was known to cultists around the world, way before Manolo became a byword for female desire. Stumbling upon this deceptively nondescript shop is like chancing upon the shoeracks at a Vogue Italia photo shoot. Edgier pieces from Prada, Marc Jacobs and Costume National are joined by practically certifi able eccentrics like Paul Harden. There’s a rack or two of clothes too.
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Edra
Masanori Umeda’s Gothic rose chair looks like it will eat you up whole if you dare to take your feet off the floor, and the Campana brother’s Leatherworks one seems as if salvaged from the Beyond Thunderdome props lot. During its 20-year history, Edra has never played safe and the Italian swagger and sauciness of its products can be an acquired taste, but one that promises a lot of fun.
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Dmagazine
Given you usually have to schlep out of town for deeply discounted designer threads, what’s up with this perversely central outlet? Yes, all the major labels are here, but tend to be the stranger of their kind. Plus the tawdry jumble of oddments still going for many hundreds of euro and a barely contained atmosphere of frenzy can make even the most dedicated fashionista sick at heart.
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Il Salvagente
As you scurry down through the grim courtyard to this basement shop, it can all feel a bit below board. Don’t worry, it may be cash only but the stock is legit, if so tightly jammed together on rails that you’ll wish you’d done a few upper-body workouts in preparation. Brands include giants Prada, D&G, Versace, Ferretti and Armani, and more unusual labels such as Teo Erre.
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Biffi
Retailer Rosy Biffi spotted potential in the young Gio and Gianni long before Armani and Versace became household names (more recently, she got Milanese women hooked onto US cult-brand jeans). She has a knack for interpreting edgier trends and making them work for conformist Milan; check out her selection of international fashion heavyweights for both men and women.
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Cavalli e Nastri
The Milanese took a while to take to vintage (Won’t people think I’m poor? How will anyone know what label it is?), but this gorgeously colourful shop in the heart of Brera has led the way. Stock is mostly sourced from mythical early and mid 20th-century Italian fashion houses, lovingly curated and priced accordingly (some mediocre ‘70s pieces rather cheekily so).
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L'Isola del Fumetto
In Italy, fumetti (comics) aren't just kids' stuff: grown men have been known to weep to discover these rare Italian comic books and hard-to-find action figures, and bargain-priced Italian translations of Flash Gordon and Gli Incredibili (The Incredibles) practically beg to be turned into laminated earrings and decoupage tables.
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Furla
Sleek, durable leather and sleek, durable designs make Furla handbag fetishes easy to rationalise - especially with prices starting under €100. Recent objects of desire include large ultracontemporary chocolate or vanilla totes with round buckle closures for around €190, and a timeless silver clutch with embossed Islamic star pattern for €85.
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Mr N
Maurizia Dova’s brightly striped and flower-strewn textiles, both in plain cotton and pvc-coated oilcloth versions, can be had by the metre right off the roll, or come beautifully made up into wallets, pouches and luggage. Illustration-adorned handbags, cheekily-inscribed knickers and Sandrine Fabre’s sweet tin boxes are also to be found in this imaginative shop.
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Antonia Accessori
New-breed buyer Antonia Giancinti’s eponymous boutique mixes locals like Bottega Veneta with international labels like Lam, Lavin, Biba and McCartney in an urban, monochrome space that echoes her Carrie Bradshaw-ish aesthetic. Antonia Accessori displays the same brash zeitgeistiness. Trust her, she’s a self-proclaimed shoe-victim (and she’s not talking bunions).
reviewed
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Eataly
With a noble declaration of ‘we understand that the conviviality around a laid table helps generate moments of true happiness’, Turin’s Slow Food supermarket has opened an outlet in Milan. Eataly aims to keep the supply chain simple, ensuring reasonable prices on artisan and small producer lines of wine, cheese, pasta, oils and even tuna. True happiness indeed.
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