Meet Me at The Mall

ALANOUD BADR TAKES ONE HAND off the steering wheel of her limited-edition Peugeot 407 convertible, turns down the volume on the Black Eyed Peas and pulls her Moto Razr V3 out of her Gucci tote. "The traffic's terrible," she tells the friend she should have met 10 minutes ago at the Mall of the Emirates, the gargantuan new shopping destination that looms out of the construction-site-riddled desert along Dubai's Sheik Zayed Road.

The mall comprises not just a still-to-be-completed five-star hotel, a branch of London's Harvey Nichols and every designer boutique you can think of but also its own ski slope. Alanoud has graciously invited me to go along with her and her friend while they shop, grab a coffee and ski. Skiing, of course, is not normally part of their daily ritual, but in Dubai you have to do things when they are new. And new is a relative term in a place where there's always a bigger mall being built, boasting even more outrageous tenants. Currently under construction is Dubailand, which in addition to shopping will have a herd of full-size animatronic dinosaurs.

It's pretty clear from a glance at the miles of construction along Sheik Zayed Road that Dubai has plenty of room for growth as an international shopping capital. The Persian Gulf region already has 50 million sq. ft. of retail space, with an additional 27 million about to open. The retailers include every designer brand name, mass-market shops and international department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Harvey Nichols.

"Dubai is a very small place," says Joseph Wan, the group chief executive of Harvey Nichols, "but it's the safe haven of the whole region, the playground of the Middle East, an attractive, exclusive market with all this novelty." Indeed, mall shopping is the No. 1 leisure activity here for both the wealthy local Emirati people and the white-collar expats who outnumber them. After all, there's not much else to do in this heat—except build more malls, as South Asian migrant workers do in round-the-clock shifts.

The locals aren't the only ones who like to shop. More than 100 airlines fly to Dubai, carrying high-spending Russians as well as increasing numbers of Brits, who used to take shopping trips to equidistant New York City but now prefer to combine shopping with sunbathing. Then there are the vacationers from the rest of the Arab world, some attracted by Dubai's liberalism—alcohol is legal for non-Muslims in five-star hotels—others enjoying dry five-star establishments.

Alanoud glances at her diamond-encrusted Chanel J12 watch. The truth is, today's schedule is a little ambitious. We've already "done" Wafi Mall, which opened in 1991 and since then has virtually doubled in size, with a new subterranean "suq shopping experience" planned. We've stopped by the chic Emirates Towers Boulevard to mooch around Villa Moda, the designer emporium that also has stores in Kuwait, Qatar and Bombay. And Alanoud has taken me to the Village Mall, near her family home in the ritzy suburb Jumeirah, where the latest must-have accessory is a clutch bag made from a gutra, the checked head scarf worn by Arab men.

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