Shopping in Edinburgh
Princes Street may be one of the country’s best-known shopping streets – it certainly is the one with the prettiest view, overlooking the Castle. However, in many respects, Edinburgh has long relinquished its reputation as Scotland’s premier retail centre to Glasgow.
Nevertheless, having a fair-sized population and a massive influx of wealthy tourists every year, means that the city still offers a wide range of shops. You’ll find tourist tat of varying quality on the Royal Mile and day-to-day kitchen utensils at Jenners department store – the oldest department store in the world.
For the bookish, there is Victoria Street which has many arts and crafts shops offering local creations along with a huge number of bookshops. Down in George Street in the New Town area you will find the fashionistas and their designer labels in profusion. All the usual suspects are on sale for the well-heeled of Scotland such as Jigsaw and Karen Millen. The city has also been graced in the last two years with a Harvey Nichols as well as a Louis Vuitton shop to keep Scottish Sloanes happy.
For the fashion lovers who want something really different, they should look to Edinburgh’s small but respected home-grown designers. Examples of this are jeweller Etincelle and the Helen Bateman shoe shop.
Maybe because of Edinburgh’s student population or just its trendy young inhabitants, there are also a number of retro clothes shops such as Gladrags and Greensleeves, as well as the giant student oasis of Flip, where they sell jeans that someone else has been kind enough to wear in for you.
The kinds of product you will find it hard to get away from – and this is due to Edinburgh’s dependence on tourism – are kilts, Tartan, haggis, Celtic rings and assorted pseudo-antique jewellery. This is not to everyone’s taste. But, at least the tourists also ensure that there are plenty of shops selling the very finest whiskeys in the world – all Scots, of course.
If you do have to go in for the kilt and sporran then locals recommend that you visit the famous Romanes & Paterson store on Princes Street, which is 200 years old and is regarded as the ‘serious’ place to get all Tartaned-up.
Strangely, the one area of retail where Edinburgh falls down is in the modern shopping mall. Very few exist in the city, partly because the huge area they need is incompatible with the ancient city layout. However, in recent years there has been one major mall development in the shape of Ocean Terminal in the Leith area of Edinburgh, where one will find the kind of one-stop shopping experience you find in most English cities.
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