Shopping in Greenwich Village: The best stores and boutiques

In operation since 1965, this friendly West Village institution sells all manner of fetish attire, as well as books, sex toys, magazines and plenty more.

You’ll be transported to Paris once you step inside this opulent bath-and-body shop. Rich burgundy carpets, gilded wallpaper, a gloriously huge chandelier and a mahogany desk that serves as the checkout area set the stage for the luxurious fragrances ($50–$300), candles ($20–$400), lotions, and soaps from brands like Diptyque and Annick Goutal. Curiosity cabinets house many of the store’s exclusives—the West Village outpost is the only location in the country to sell several items, including candles by Les Secrets Ladurée Paris.  

The PPB's main focus is on couples looking to invigorate their sex lives with props, potions or costumes. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and the store carries a huge number of toys, starting with cheap bullet vibes and topping out with $100-plus extreme dildos. The company's been in business since 1972, which makes Pink Pussycat a trusted name for dommes and submissives alike.

You can curse French women for their louche glamour or beat them at their own game. Provençal native Ludivine Grégoire's charming eponymous boutique provides an excellent arsenal of sweetly chic labels such as Vanessa Bruno, Les Praires de Paris and Noro, which uses très raffiné fabrics like muslin and cotton sateen.

This West Village smoke shop has products at every price for every type of smoker—there are glass pipes and rolling papers and hookahs and flavored tobacco and grinders and vaporizers (and more). Also, the people who work here are knowledgable and helpful about the vast inventory without being pushy, a rarity in smoke shops.

This vintage mecca has been peddling men’s and women’s clothing and accessories since 1978, serving clientele as diverse as Alexa Chung, Marc Jacobs and Cyndi Lauper. Owner Laura Wills travels the world, scouting eclectic finds that span the 1950s to the 1990s, and organizes clothing racks by decade. Do you need sunglasses from the ’70s? How about a royal-wedding T-shirt from the 1980s? Head upstairs to check out higher-end specialty garments like men’s Moschino printed suit jackets ($595) and Hattie Carnegie satin cap-sleeve dresses with beading ($895). The boutique is transformed into a Halloween showcase for the month of October, and since the staff is made up almost entirely of stylists, it's a great place to put together a complete period look, including the era-appropriate wigs and accessories.

This stationery store—with exposed brick, cheerful floral wallpaper and a pink overhanging lamp—exudes West Village charm. It’s owned by sisters Amy Swanson and Beth Salvini, whose family has been in the printing biz for three generations, and nearly everything is designed in-house and produced on an old Gutenberg-style press. Aside from note cards and stationery, GLP also offers notebooks, rubber stamps, labels, gift tags and striking wrapping paper ($3–$5 a sheet).

Gift-giving is a whole lot easier with this cozy West Village boutique, whose selection of pretty, tasteful items—ranging from handmade jewelry ($30–$150) to artisanal home goods ($15–$50)—offers something for every hostess, birthday girl and bride-to-be in your life. Reclaimed-wood shelving showcases Julie Nolan’s brass-disc pendants featuring astrological constellations ($45) and Coatt’s Morse-code necklaces that spell out love, peace and friend in gold-filled dots and dashes ($36). Considerosity also specializes in items that are practical (S’well colorful stainless-steel water bottles, $35), thoughtful (West Third Brand daily affirmation wish candles, $16) and just plain delicious (Macaron Café macaron gift boxes, $14–$49).

The clearance rack at this hip minichain is always worth checking—we’ve scored knee-high leather boots for under $40. Of course, the window displays are pretty tempting too—seeing how they’re always stocked with the latest designs from Seychelles, Dolce Vita, Chelsea Crew, Navid O Nadia, Naughty Monkey and more.

Devotees of François Nars’s elegant and eye-popping makeup line can now skip Sephora or Bloomingdale's and head straight to the source at NARS’s first boutique in NYC. The small but sophisticated space combines vintage details—like distressed hardwood floors, crown moldings and an antique marble mantelpiece—with sleek modernity in the form of white walls, shiny black display cubes and floor-to-ceiling mirrors in a makeup-consultation area. The long, wall-length product-testing bar displays loot for every facial feature: eyes (shimmery shadows $23–$33, eyeliner pencils $21), lips (ultra-shiny glosses $24, long-wearing lip liners $21), cheeks (cream blushes $27, bronzing powders $33) and skin (sheer matte foundations $42, concealers $22). In addition to NARS’s staple collections, you’ll find items exclusive to this store, like 413 Bleecker pure-matte lipsticks ($25) and limited-edition handcrafted bento-box-like Kabuki sets featuring two bowls of hand-poured lipsticks in complementary colors alongside a lip brush ($125).