Manchester

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Shopping

The last decade has seen Manchester ascend from high street mediocrity to a retail playground worth at least twice Philip Green's personal pension fund. It would be absurd to deny the role that the IRA bomb, planted right outside the moribund Marks & Spencer, played in ushering in this new era of shopping. Yet the bomb wasn't the only catalyst for change; the relatively recent focus by urban designers nationwide on regenerating city centres, the rise of the pink pound and the UK's new-found love affair with the credit card over the last few years can also be identified as contributing factors.

Perhaps due to its industrial, muck-and-brass past, Manchester subsequently went a bit flash. Subtlety is a gradual learning curve, and a delicately logo-ed jacket lining still isn't serious competition for a full-on label-flash and a gleaming Range Rover stuffed with Louis Vuitton bags. Designer shops aren't in short supply, from the opulent intimacy of Vivienne Westwood to the crashing timpani of tills that is Harvey Nichols. Buyers for the pricier stores know that anything too high-necked, eccentric or baggy won't sell.

Manchester likes to see and be seen, and for girls, that means plenty of tanned, toned flesh, with a shiny leather bag the size of an elephant's bladder to set it all off. Boys, too, like to stand out - and that means the right jeans, the best jackets and distressed T-shirts that cost the best part of £100.

Of course, it's not all WAGs and their wannabes. Manchester is also home to one of the biggest (if not the biggest) student populations in Europe, whose voracious appetite for cool clothes, music and books has contributed significantly to the expansion of the city's hippest area, the Northern Quarter. Bound by Oldham Street and High Street, the rabbit warren of roads in what used to be a grim, run-down garment district is now spangled with independent boutiques such as Wood, Westworld and Rags to Bitches, second-hand bookshops, and an ever-growing collection of record stores. It's also home to Afflecks Palace, four storeys of shops selling everything required to turn a teenage country bumpkin into a hip young gunslinger, from battered trilbies and witty T-shirts to stripey tights, kitsch posters and psychedelic bongs. The Northern Quarter still has some way to go before it's a tourist experience as cute and comfortable as, say, the Lanes in Brighton - but it offers an eclectic shopping experience light years away from the ubiquity of the high street.

If the high street's calling, though, there are few shopping areas in Britain that can beat the combined forces of the Arndale, with its fancy new extension, and Market Street, which looks much as it always has, but still pulls weekend crowds like a cup final at Old Trafford. All the big boys - M&S, Boots, Primark, HMV, Adidas - are joined by the usual parade of fashion stores, including a few edgier newcomers like Urban Outfitters.

Those who prefer to shop in spacious comfort, however, will bypass the heaving fleshpots of the Arndale and head directly to the serious shopper's axis of Exchange Square, St Ann's Square and King Street, where shops whose wares feature regularly in glossy magazines proliferate. Selfridges and Harvey Nichols between them take care of everyone who understands the difference between Marni and McCartney, while the glossy sweep of high-end fashion stores that line New Exchange street offers a series of clearly defined - and desirable - looks for the less sartorially certain.

If Manchester is fast becoming a retail tale of two cities, with the creative independents providing the flip side to the designer dream, nobody actually seems to mind. Rather than sticking to their designated patch, Manchester shoppers are happy to wander between the two extremes, with wannabe WAGs and businessmen popping into the craft market or strolling down Oldham Street to Magma, perhaps, for a quirky gift, and the skint but savvy youngsters playing dress-up in Selfridges all afternoon, then spending £2 on a coffee at the end of it. The intimate scale of the City Centre - which can be crossed easily within 15 minutes - means that everyone feels they can go anywhere. Even King Street, with its patrician airs, happily devotes space to Big Issue sellers, mobile phone shops and high street chains, while Deansgate's newsagents and scruffy record shops lead on to the art deco splendour of House of Fraser, topped by the eye-wateringly pricey Bauer Millet car showroom at the Castlefield end. Whatever you want is available within a couple of square miles. Ten years ago, it wasn't possible to find half of it within 100 miles. And if the City Centre's too much hassle, the suburbs are striving to compete. Chorlton's Beech Road, home to a stretch of imaginative, affordable boutiques, galleries and gift shops, draws loyal customers from all over South Manchester, while Didsbury offers a chance to cherry-pick from a selection of interesting delis, book traders and fashion shops. The outlying towns to the North and East - Stockport, Bury, Prestwich - offer solid high street shopping opportunities and great markets, while Salford is home to the Lowry Outlet Mall, where several members of the city's great and good have been spotted taking advantage of the up to 75 per cent discounts at Whistles, Flannels, Karen Millen and the like.

Mancunians love to shop. The new-found popularity of retail therapy can be explained partly as a response to the city being continuously labelled as that place where it always rains and where everyone looks like Liam Gallagher. It could also be because locals are lucky enough to have access to the best spectrum of shops outside the capital. Mostly, though, it's down to one simple fact: that they simply can.

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