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Creations Pneumatiques
Atlas Abdelghani is a Bob Marley fan, as you can see from the posters he's framed with recycled tyres, with one word embedded over Marley's head: 'Michelin'. This is one recycling maâlem with a sneaky sense of humour and serious ingenuity, from treasure chests with air valves as drawer pulls to tyre-tread flip-flops with serious traction.
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Créazen
CréaZen's got your back stylishly covered with modern linen tunics with geometric embroidery and djellaba -inspired hooded silk shirts. Snap up pants and kaftans off the rack or made to order in linen, silky combed cotton or 'Moroccan cashmere' (cotton fleece), and don't miss reasonably priced designer accessories: jewel-toned silk necklaces, sassy tasselled belts and lucky leather slippers embossed with a hand of Fatima.
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Enfin
Trim, modern, hottie tunics for men in sumptuous materials and colours: deep red linen, ivory with black trim around the neck, black raw silk with a single off-centre grey stripe. Prices aren't cheap, but with the right bargaining banter you can get better deals here than in Enfin's factory outlet in Sidi Ghanem. The pink-and-black boutique and sharply dressed staff are incongruously glitzy for the raw, hardworking northern section of the souqs - but that's what makes Enfin so quintessentially Marrakesh.
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Gnaoua Music Shop
You'll have to duck to avoid banging the drums over the doorway with your head, but you've come to the right place to go Gnaoua and join a jam session. These are the handmade, rustic instruments played in the Djemaa el-Fna, from recycled-metal castanets to goatskins stretched over sturdy frames that can take a real pounding.
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Grand Bijouterie
Get reeled in by small silver charms, and hooked by gold chandelier earrings that tickle shoulders and deplete bank reserves. Pieces are sold by weight, so serious shoppers should know the going market rate for gold and silver and mind the scales. The fancy filigree jewellery hails from India, but you'll still spy some local jewellers diligently plying their trade.
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Intensité Nomade
Mostly couture kaftans and tunics, with prices to match - but while you won't find bargains, you will find cleverly tailored men's linen shirts by major Italian and Moroccan designers. Hassan Hajjaj's silk-screened Pop Art T-shirt features colourful tea glasses for a Moroccan twist on Warhol, and a minutely pin-tucked ivory silk shirt duly humbles those of us who struggle with mending socks.
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Jamade
As you might guess from Jamade's deep-purple floor and space-age orange ceramic tea sets, this is not your granny's idea of a Moroccan crafts shop. The stock is stylish and prices are fixed; featured local designers include Tigmi, the women's cooperative that embroiders coasters with striking symbols to bring Berber baraka (good vibes) to your coffee table.
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Kifkif
Mirrors made of Moroccan sardine cans, silver rings with interchangeable felt baubles, and satchels made of striped awning vinyl: KifKif employs Marrakesh's hippest artisans to create original designs that are often copied but never quite equalled elsewhere in the souqs. Great stuff for kids too, especially soft, striped baby djellabas (robes).
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Kulchi
Now you know where Marrakshi clubbers get their chic looks. This local designer mixes trade-route African influences with a Marrakshi sense of humour: mod cocktail dresses in Senegalese Pop Art prints, sleek handbags made from recycled signage, and come-hither kaftans in diaphanous fabrics. Prices aren't cheap, but less than you'd pay for original designs back home. Check out the sister boutique inside Le Comptoir.
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L'art Du Bain Savonnerie Artisanale
An abundance of fragrant, artisanal bath products delight the senses: pyramids of handmade palm oil soaps with organic bergamot and vetiver; towers of shaving soap with soothing Moroccan mint; and shelves of argan oil from an Essaouira cooperative in tassel-topped bottles. They carry organic, artisanal soaps and gifts come sprinkled with rosebuds and star anise and tied with raffia.
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L'Orientaliste
The eternal European fascination with the other side of the Mediterranean is encouraged by this boutique, packed to overflowing with enough Arabesque accessories to equip your own harem: a Deco-decadent tea service, vintage lithographs, chip-carved ebony frames, and L'Orientaliste's signature fragrances in amber, jasmine and mimosa.
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La Rose
Designer fashion with a bonus: any of the styles you find on the rack can be modified to suit you. Prefer that hooded top in linen, or that dress with short sleeves? Consider it done. Better still: prices here are lower than you'd expect to find on this boutique street, and far less than chain-store retail back home.
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Les Parfums Du Soleil
Those tantalizing Marrakshi garden scents have been blended and bottled by ethnobotanist Abderrazzak Benchaabane, whose fragrances are drawn from native flora and inspired by Berber aromatherapy principles. Soir de Marrakesh is a sultry stroll through a night-blooming garden, while Mogador brings a coastal breeze with traces of argan oil, Kaffir lime and cedar.
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Librairie Chatr
Where else can you learn about the medicinal plants of Morocco while waiting in line to buy postcards, office supplies and evocative little etchings of Medina doors? A reliable source for poolside paperbacks and Somerset Maugham classics in English, hiking maps, French and Berber language dictionaries, kids' picture books, and inexpensive cookery books.
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Librairie Dar El-Bacha
A fine selection of cookbooks, art books, and postcards, plus stamps to send them and some wonderful antique Moroccan stamps to take to all your philatelist friends back home. Bookshop owner Noureddine Tilsaghani is also a photographer, and you can pick up some of his atmospheric shots of Marrakesh here. There's a fantastic selection of Moroccan literature and poetry in (mostly French) translation.
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Linéaire B Cosmetics
Flowery descriptions in French effusively promise therapeutic effects from organic local ingredients and superconcentrated essential oils here. Basics such as savon noir (black soap) cost three times what they might in the Rahba Qedima, but the speciality items are worth the premium: rich argan oil balm scented with jasmine, after-sun lotion with Barbary figs and healing herbs, facial masks with white mud from Fez and geranium-flower essence.
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Marchè Municipale
This pleasant, tidy covered market does a brisk trade in all the Marrakesh essentials: preserved lemons, spices, cooking tagines and, oddly enough, tennis wear. The butchers have been relegated to the south end of the market, so you don't have to contemplate horse meat when you're in the market for roses and designer knock-off T-shirts with nonsensical slogans such as 'Dior is my home'.
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Masroure Abdillah
It usually takes decades to earn the title maâlem (master craftsperson), but young Masroure earns the title the hard way, pounding wool with savon noir (black soap) into felt. He then moulds it into seamless slippers, baubles for necklaces, and sturdy tote bags. Masroure's felt flowers come in snappy shades of natural brown, bright orange and splashy hot pink, and make groovy brooches, hatpins and everlasting bouquets.
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Mellah Market
For the south side of the city, this is a major source for food, flowers and other household goods. Fair warning to vegetarians: the door closest to Place des Ferblantiers leads directly to the chicken and meat area.
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Michi
Berber wabisabi is the design ethic at Michi, a creative partnership of Japanese Marrakesh resident Masayoshi Ishida and Marrakshi master craftsmen. Together they've created a look that combines natural materials, spare forms, and a whimsical sense of humour: woven raffia wing-tip shoes, a long-handled mug with a tiny orangewood spoon, flour-sack tote bags lined with basketry.
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Ministero Del Gusto
You may have to elbow David Bowie and Iman out of the way to snap up that Moroccan Pop Art painting. Stop by to ogle the Gaudí-gone-Berber décor, and score custom-designed accessories such as hand-carved lemonwood cutlery plus vintage finds - including some killer vintage party dresses on the mezzanine. Call ahead, or you might find the place closed for a fashion mag photo shoot.
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Mohammed Ben El-Hair
Mt Everest is overrated; the most thrilling mountain to scale is the one of colourful Berber carpets in this tiny shop. Charming elderly proprietor Abu Mohammed ushers you in with a smile and mint tea, then waves towards the mountain with a single word of English: 'Democracy!' This is your invitation to clamber up, and start pulling down whatever carpets appeal to you. The prices are more than democratic; they're downright proletarian.
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Mohammed Rida Ben Zouine
Saville Row tailors would bite their thimbled thumbs with envy at Ben Zouine's custom hand-finished men's shirts, curve-skimming linen dresses with handmade silk closures, and snappy hooded jackets in 'Moroccan cashmere' (thick combed-cotton flannel). Sidi Mohammed keeps tabs on the latest men's' suit styles from Belgium, and can make you a slimming, bitter chocolate brown suit with a sneaky orange lining that Dries van Noten might admire.
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Mouhassin Epices
Take home your own Moroccan culinary and cosmetic secrets from this sweet, straight-dealing merchant of spices and natural remedies. Mouhassin sells good-quality saffron, ras al-hanout spice mix, amber perfume, rosewater and more at reasonable prices - shop here first before you get rooked in the Rahba Kedima.
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Mustapha Blaoui
The next best thing to taking your riad home would be to take home all those fabulous furnishings - and with Mustapha Blaoui's generous shipping policy and stock of everything from hand-embroidered coverlets to inlaid rolltop desks, that's actually possible. Some items are imported from India, so if you want to bring home a Marrakshi specialty, just ask the easygoing staff to point you toward the locally produced goods.
