such as Alexander Wang and Amanda Wakeley. As the women headed for the dresses and accessories, for the men it was straight to the shoe section. The Emirates is notorious for a lack of top drawer male footwear and starved of such offerings it was not long before they had staff running back and forth with boxes under their arms. Mark, a Sunderland expatriate living in Dubai, has a footwear collection Imelda Marcos would be proud of and was literally beaming as he found a couple of pairs of plimsolls to add to his already bulging shoe cupboard. It was safe to say everyone’s credit card took a bit of a pounding in Harvey Nics, but the real prize, especially for the women, was a trip to Selfridges. With no stores outside England, but with a worldwide reputation as one of the greatest department stores around, there is no doubt the fact Manchester has two is a real wow factor. What surprised most of the group was the sheer size and scale of the city centre branch. This played itself out at the one hour mark when a few headed off to a nearby watering hole as the others continued to shop. A detailed inventory over a casual early dinner revealed threads from Fred Perry, 7 for all mankind, Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood amongst others.
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The next day was a shopping double header – a morning spent in rambling around the Northern Quarter followed by a bite to eat and then a trip to the Trafford Centre. I had spent the previous night wittering on about the treasure trove that is Afflecks and how it had, at one time, the “greatest collection of Oasis bootleg CDs known to man”. It did not disappoint years later. There was something for everyone with vintage clothes, retro wall prints and handmade necklaces all being snapped up. Mark even found time to get a quick haircut. With an hour to spare there was enough time for a dash around the rest of the quarter from which Andrew and Naomi, two young music aficionados, emerged from clutching armfuls of classic and cutting edge vinyl to take back to the Gulf. Convincing a bunch of UAE expats to spend an afternoon at a shopping mall was going to be tough. All seven emirates are dotted with them and Dubai, in particular, is one of the shopping mall capitals of the world. It has one with an indoor ski slope attached, another with a giant shark-filled aquarium in the centre and a third with a giant hot air balloon attached to it. So what on earth could The Trafford Centre have to offer? The argument that hit the spot was that it boasts convenient top line shopping with