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The Crescent City's shopping is as eclectic as its music, food, and culture. In local boutiques and specialty stores, you’ll find everything from rare antiques to novelty T-shirts, artwork, jewelry, fashion, and foods that represent the city's varied flavors. Up and down Magazine Street and throughout the French Quarter, you'll spot old-world influences intersecting with modern trends, making it easy for even the most discerning shopper to find something new to treasure.
New Orleanians have a deep love for their city and its culture. For shoppers, this translates into pride-centric merchandise, including jewelry and clothing bearing city emblems, such as the fleur-de-lis—the stylized iris design associated with New Orleans since its early days—and Mardi Gras masks, black-and-gold Saints symbols, and humorous statements about political issues and local personalities. Residents strongly support local entrepreneurs, and there are many homegrown stores selling locally made goods.
Make sure to pay attention to some of the city's artwork. Posters designed around Jazz Fest and other special events, for example, often become collector's items. In the thriving arts districts, you'll find contemporary works by local artists alongside renowned names in the art world. The sounds of New Orleans—Dixieland, contemporary jazz, rhythm and blues, Cajun, zydeco, rap, hip-hop, and the unique bounce beat—are available in music stores, such as Louisiana Music Factory and Peaches Records, and at live-music venues including Preservation Hall, Snug Harbor, and House of Blues. Bookstores stock a plethora of local books on photography, history, cooking, and folklore. Clothing stores focus on items that wear well in New Orleans's often intense heat and humidity, with styles ranging from the latest runway fashions to vintage frocks and styles by local designers.
Merging the attentiveness of a spa with the old-world charm of a barbershop, this high-end men's salon caters to guys who prefer getting a hot-towel shave and a haircut while enjoying a whiskey. The front of the store is devoted to manly diversions, with shaving sets, contemporary and New Orleans–theme cuff links, pocket knives, wallets, bow ties (a specialty), grooming products for face and hair, and gifts.
Satisfy your sweet tooth with an array of pralines, made while you watch. The traditional version is concocted from cane sugar spiked with pecans, but other flavors include chocolate, café au lait, and even bananas Foster. You can also buy hot sauce, prepackaged muffuletta mix, and Bourbon Street glaze, as well as art and books about New Orleans, zydeco CDs, and logo cups and aprons.
You don't have to pay admission to enter this part of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, where you can buy ceramics, glasswork, decorative pieces, books, scarves, and jewelry by Southern artists. The museum itself is filled with contemporary and folk paintings, mixed-media artworks, photography, and sculpture.
Live music and after-hours events are held on Thursday.
Named for William Faulkner, who rented a room here in 1925, this bookstore is designated a National Literary Landmark. It specializes in first editions and rare and out-of-print books—mostly by Southern authors—but also carries new titles. The store keeps thousands of additional books at an off-site warehouse and hosts an annual Happy Birthday, Mr. Faulkner! Festival that salutes Faulkner and new Southern writers.
Anyone with a passion for playing dress-up and a flair for the dramatic will love this place filled with custom wigs, wild accessories, makeup, and hair products. The shop provides essential resources for Mardi Gras and Halloween costumes as well as ample creative advice.
Owned by the ebullient Lauren Thom, Fleurty Girl—its name is a play on "fleur-de-lis"—is the place to go for New Orleans apparel, home decor, and gifts. The store is known for its T-shirts displaying the humorous catchphrases and iconography of local culture and New Orleans Saints pride. There's affordable jewelry, children's books, colorful rain boots, Carnival-themed gear, and fleurs-de-lis in every imaginable form. There's also a location in the Garden District, at 3117 Magazine Street.
A must for perfume lovers, this store has been creating fragrances since 1931. Scented oils, soaps, sachets, and potpourri have been made on-site for four generations and are sold all over the world. There are dozens of fragrances for men and women, as well as bath salts, anti-aging treatments, massage and body oils, antique shaving and dressing-table accessories, and new and antique perfume bottles.
Antiques lovers may want to set aside several hours to marvel at the extensive collection here. Rare pieces, such as furniture from royal families, join 18th- and 19th-century French, American, and English antiques, sterling silver, statuary, fine art, and jewelry in this 30,000-square-foot store, which opened in 1912.
Mignon Faget is the most famous jewelry designer in New Orleans, and her upscale sterling-silver and 14k-gold collections reflect her love and fascination with botany, nature, architecture, and the city's culture. Elements of bamboo, fleurs-de-lis, honey bees, red beans, and iron balconies have all been inspirations. Faget studied sculpture at Newcomb College at Tulane University and started out as a fashion designer in 1969, but she quickly gave up clothing to focus exclusively on jewelry. Her work has been featured in museums and shops around the world, but her biggest fan club remains right here in New Orleans, where her pieces are instantly recognized. In addition to her boutique on Magazine Street, she has a gallery at the Shops at Canal Place.
Eclectic, feminine, and contemporary, this store's home furnishings are the sort you'd find in a high-end architectural magazine. If you love the look but don't have the decorating gene, the staff provide interior design services.
One of the city's premier men's stores has been selling high-end suits, tuxedos, casual wear, and made-to-measure apparel since 1924. Brands range from Brioni and Zegna to Ralph Lauren, Prada, and Hugo Boss.
The Southern Food and Beverage Museum documents and celebrates Southern culinary heritage, so its gift shop, of course, carries some of the best cookbooks from the South. It also has food-related and New Orleans–centric gifts, cooking utensils, and vintage and modern cocktail tools and manuals.
New Orleans–based designer Candice Gwinn puts a retro-romantic spin on the women's fashions she creates. Inspired by styles from the 1940s to the 1950s, the Trashy Diva line includes dresses, blouses, skirts, coats, jewelry, and upscale shoes with vintage flair and modern fit. The Trashy Diva lingerie shop, located at 712 Royal Street, features corsets and romantic evening wear. An expansive Trashy Diva shoe, clothing, and lingerie boutique is also located in the 2000 block of Magazine Street.
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