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Melbourne has firmly established itself as the nation's fashion capital. Australian designer labels are available on High Street in Armadale, on Toorak Road and Chapel Street in South Yarra, and on Bridge Road in Richmond. High-quality vintage clothing abounds on Greville Street in Prahran. Discount hunters love the huge discount fashion shopping center attached to Southern Cross Station on Spencer Street, with its many stores. Most shops are open Monday–Thursday 9–5:30, Friday until 9, and Saturday until 5. Major city stores are open Sunday until 5.
An elegant 19th-century shopping plaza with mosaic-tile floors, Block Arcade contains the venerable Hopetoun Tea Rooms, serving high tea since 1892; French Jewel Box for rare and vintage jewelry, specialty Australian chocolatier Haigh's; Australian plant essences company Essensorie; and the Gewurzhaus spice merchant.
Celebrated Australian design duo Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy create luminous bowls and vases, and bold resin, gold, and silver jewelry. Each piece is distinctive and unique. Its second shop is in the city center.
A Melbourne music institution, Greville Records carries rare releases in rock, alternative, and vinyl.
This market has buzzed with food and bargain shoppers since 1878. With more than 600 mostly open-air stalls, this sprawling, spirited bazaar is the city's prime produce outlet—many Melburnians come here to buy strawberries, honey, fresh flowers, imported cheeses, meat, and eye-bright fresh fish. There is a section for certified organic produce, and the beautiful Dairy Produce Hall is a plethora of cheeses, fresh pasta and breads, coffee, and deli delights. On Sunday, there is less food and more great deals on jeans, T-shirts, and souvenirs. Join a walking foodie tour, while food trucks and live music on weekends and seasonal night openings lend the market a festive air.
Established in 1867, South Melbourne Market is Melbourne's second-oldest market, beloved by grandmothers and the suburb's hipster set. You'll find a huge selection of fresh produce and foodstuffs (the dim sims are famous), an incubator section for upcoming local housewares and accessories designers, and a food hall. Foodie tours are run every Saturday at 9:30 am (A$79, bookings required); they take 90 minutes and include tastings.
A fantastic array of cookbooks stock the shelves, including many from local chefs. Located at the Queen Victoria Market, the shop's only steps from plenty of fresh produce, meat, and fish to support any sudden inspirations.
Once the busiest east–west thoroughfare in the city, Bourke Street Mall is a pedestrian-only zone—but watch out for those trams! Two of the city's biggest department stores are here; an essential part of growing up in Melbourne is being taken to Myer at Christmas to see the window displays.
In Richmond, east of the city, Bridge Road is a popular shopping strip for women's retail fashion that caters to all budgets.
Northeast of the city in Fitzroy, Brunswick Street has hip and grungy restaurants, coffee shops, gift stores, and clothing outlets selling the latest look, as well as retro finds, from alternative fashion to housewares, vintage posters to delightful bric-a-brac.
Brunswick Street Bookstore specializes in art, design, and architecture publications, and also stocks modern Australian literature.
A popular, sprawling haunt for seekers of the old and odd, this market, about 6 km (4 miles) northeast of Chapel Street, South Yarra, has more than 300 stalls selling antiques, preloved clothing, books, and knickknacks from 7 am every Sunday. Food vans provide sustenance.
This street is where you can find some of the ritziest boutiques in Melbourne, as well as cafés, art galleries, bars, and restaurants.
Everything from estate jewelry and stylish secondhand clothes to vintage porcelain and retro curios is on sale in the wooden cubicles and glass-fronted counters of this permanent store.
A precinct of stores frequented by shoppers lured by labels, Little Collins Street is still worth a visit. In between frock shops you'll find musty stores selling classic film posters, antique and estate jewelry, and Australian opals. The glittering St. Collins Lane draws less mainstream, higher-end designers, while the eastern end of Collins Street, beyond the cream-and-red Romanesque facade of St. Michael's Uniting Church, is the Paris End, a name coined by Melburnians to identify the elegance of its fashionable shops as well as its general hauteur. Here you find big-name international designer clothing, bags, and jewelry. Its newest precinct, the 80 Collins Street, hosts such curios as sustainable cobblers and luxury eye-wear designers between cafés, new hotels, and swanky restaurants.
Craft fosters creativity with seminars and exhibits, and has a top-notch selection of Australian pottery, textile works, and jewelry for sale. The not-for-profit design group also runs free exhibitions and interviews with makers of contemporary, sustainable craft and design.
This big, upmarket Australian department store has a large array of luxury brands for both men and women.
International and Australian designers mix and mingle here, so you'll find local fashion icons like Scotch & Soda, Silk Laundry, and American Vintage. There are eight boutiques in all, including ones in Prahran and Brighton.
Many international brands established their first Australian outlets at this major shopping mall in the city center. The mall is filled with fashion, technology, food, and art outlets, and joined via aboveground glass walkways to the Myer and David Jones department stores and the Bourke Street mall to the south, and Melbourne Central shopping center heading north. Australian designers are well represented, including Camilla and Marc, Zimmermann, Gorman, and Ksubi. Coffee is always close at hand and there are several upmarket food courts—on the fourth floor, Tetsujin's sushi has great city views.
Open since 1970, this market started as an outlet for local artists. Today, it has up to 200 stalls selling contemporary paintings, crafts, pottery, jewelry, and homemade gifts, against a backdrop of the glittering bay. It's open every Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm.
Chic boutiques fight for space among top-end cafés, bars, and restaurants, many of them selling merchandise by up-and-coming Australian designers on Flinders Lane. Between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets, look for Cathedral Arcade, home to vintage and designer stores, in the bottom of the 1926 Nicholas Building. The lift leads to an eclectic collection of tiny shops full of unique fashion, boutique perfumiers, and art studios. Flinders Lane will try to divert you with walls of colorful street art.
The gallery shows and sells the work of established and new Aboriginal artists from the communities of Balgo Hills, Papunya, Maningrida, Turkey Creek (Warmun), the Tiwi Islands, and others in the Central Desert, Top End, and Kimberley regions. Visits are by appointment only.
Bespoke shoemaker Hassett sells handmade leather belts, satchels, and wallets, many made from kangaroo leather. Much of Theo Hassett's leather is sourced from Greenhalgh Tannery in Ballarat, which specializes in tanning with wattle tree bark. On the premises you'll also find a café and a barbershop.
Located between the suburbs of Prahran and Armadale, to the east of Chapel Street, High Street has the best collection of antiques dealers in Australia.
Here you'll find a dizzying complex of predominantly high-street brands that's huge enough to enclose an 1880s redbrick shot tower (once used to make bullets) in its atrium. The Ella (Elizabeth and La Trobe Streets) corner is a tangle of hole-in-the-wall eats, coffee roasters, the excellent Blackhearts & Sparrows bottle shop, and acclaimed cocktail bar BYRDIE (try the wattleseed Negroni).
One of the country's largest department stores, carrying myriad casual and luxury brands for men and women. Refuel at the in-store Brunetti café.
A fantastic, mouthwatering array of high-quality foods imported from all over the world is available at this popular gourmet market, including organic produce and sustainable seafood. The guided Market Discovery Trail runs the third Saturday of each month, including tastings and coffee (A$35).
An independent retailer with an exceptional range of books, magazines, and film and music CDs, Readings is a Melbourne institution. The Carlton store has operated since 1969, and there are now six suburban branches and another shop in the State Library in the city center.
Works from Melbourne's best artists and designers are on display at this popular outdoor weekend market, from oil paintings to sustainable bags, housewares to clothing and jewelry—ideal for unique, eclectic gifts and creative mementos. The organizers also arrange other makers' markets in various sites across the city. For more art, wander the nearby streets to see some of the city's best large-scale murals.
Opened in 1870, Melbourne's oldest shopping plaza remains a lovely place to browse and is home to the splendid Gaunt's Clock, which has tolled away the hours since 1892.
