Observations from the Road: Mallin' in the Kong Edition

It seems like the last two weeks has been one big trip to the mall for me. First, I increased the number of malls I’ve visited in Manila by at least three, spending the majority of my 10 days there either in Rockwell or Ortigas wandering aimlessly about different malls like a lost soul relegated to window shopping and stealing AC from cafes. Now, in Hong Kong, I’m doing the same, only I’m visiting old and familiar haunts like Festival Walk and Pacific Place. Given that I’m broke, mallin’ doesn’t hold the instant gratification benefits that it otherwise might, but being a student of retail therapy, mallin’ still offers me great fun in seeing the latest trends. So, here are some retail notes from Hong Kong.

I’m sad for Esprit. Less than ten years ago, Hong Kong-based Esprit was a retail success story, with a strong home base and growth in Europe. One of my favorite past-times in HK before was checking out the Esprit outlets and hunting for bargains in their stores. I even had an Esprit Club card at one point. They used to boast a large mini-anchor space in Festival Walk, and outlets throughout Hong Kong. Earlier in the year, I found that they had vacated their large space (replaced by newly ascendant Uniqlo, which seems to be eating Esprit’s lunch) in favor of a smaller one. Today, coming back here to search for some jeans, I discovered that they had abandoned Festival Walk completely. What a quick fall.

There are two HK-based stores that I really love for their aesthetic sense and would love to buy some clothes from. Chocolate has clean lines, simple designs, bright lighting, and stores with walls in the shape of a massive chocolate bar. Love it! Yet, I can’t bring myself to spend forty bucks on a t-shirt that says NAVY. Truth is, their clothing is sort of uninspired Brit-boy, Topshop without the edge. www.izzue.com definitely doesn’t have the problem of lacking edge – in fact, they’ve got way too much of it for my taste. I love the stores and the personality they are fostering, but besides one casual blazer I saw three years ago, there is little in the store that I would ever actually wear, although I keep going back to try to prove myself wrong. I’m just not the jean short, vest, and army boot wearing type. Sorry.

We don’t get a lot of agnes b. in the States, but this is a store that I just love, through and through. From their store layouts and design to a lot of their clean, simple, classic clothing items, to the logo, I adore agnes b. I think it would be hard for me to justify spending over a hundred dollars on a simple white shirt or something similar, but I do dream of owning an agnes b. bag or briefcase. If I ever work again. However, even without buying, wandering around an agnes b. store is always fun – they’ve gone the way of Armani and offer luggage, candy and cakes, and even have their own florist. Talk about diversified!

That’s it for now! If I see anything else of note while mallin’ in the next few days, I’ll make sure to update ya’ll! In the meantime, I’m going to keep window shopping!