Shopping along Gargaresh

Eleven expat wives. Three cars. One mission: to hunt down and purchase clothing from the dozens of clothing stores along the Tripoli shopping strip of Gargaresh Rd.



As you can see, Tripoli is not without its label stores. Here's the Benetton store, and the Stefanel store. A recently arrived one is the Spanish-chain Mango store (there's one in Sydney too), which looks gorgeous from the outside, but for some ungodly reason doesn't stay open past 10pm like everyone else does, so was not blessed with a visit from 11 cashed-up Western women.


There's also plenty of smaller stores without English labels. Sadly, many of the clothes (especially ones labelled with Prada and Versace) are not designed for the well-fed lady - they're going for the teen market in a big way here.


Since I was slack on the photos of this area when I first got here, I can't post comparison pictures to prove how much it's changed, but it has. New clothing stores, new restuarants (including the first official chain fast-food restuarant, Cook-Dor from Egypt), at least four new art stores, stores selling nothing but doors, and across the road, stores selling nothing but window treatments. Even the clothing and furniture stores that were here when I arrived 9 months ago seem to have transformed in what they sell (or I just got used to it...).


Those who like shoes would be in shoe heaven...this same store sent most of the expat wives into a frenzy over its $4 pashmina wraps (ahem, 'pashmina'). It also had quite the handbag collection, from Dubai.


We also weren't looking for evening wear, so I didn't manage any photos of the evening gowns and ball dresses, ranging from 80s-awful to just to die for. There is this very mild example of wedding dresses, though...