15 Best Shopping in City Center, Melbourne

This market has buzzed with food and bargain shoppers since 1878. With more than 600 mostly open-air stalls, this sprawling, spirited bazaar is the city's prime produce outlet—many Melburnians come here to buy strawberries, honey, fresh flowers, imported cheeses, meat, and eye-bright fresh fish. There is a section for certified organic produce, and the beautiful Dairy Produce Hall is a plethora of cheeses, fresh pasta and breads, coffee, and deli delights. On Sunday there is less food and more great deals on jeans, T-shirts, and souvenirs. Food trucks and live music on weekends lend the market a festive air.

An elegant 19th-century shopping plaza with mosaic-tile floors, Block Arcade contains the venerable Hopetoun Tea Rooms--- serving high tea since 1892—jewelers including French Jewelbox, specialty Australian chocolatier Haigh's, the underground, long-standing record shop Basement Discs, Australian plant essences company Essensorie, Gewurzhaus spice merchant, and Australian By Design, hidden away on the third level (take the lift opposite the Hopetoun Tea Rooms).

A fantastic array of cookbooks stock the shelves of Books for Cooks, including many from local chefs. Located at the Queen Victoria Market, the shop's only steps from plenty of fresh produce, meat, and fish to support any sudden inspirations.

Once the busiest east–west thoroughfare in the city, Bourke Street Mall is a pedestrian-only zone—but watch out for those trams! Two of the city's biggest department stores are here; an essential part of growing up in Melbourne is being taken to Myer at Christmas to see the window displays.

In Richmond, east of the city, Bridge Road is a popular shopping strip for women's retail fashion that caters to all budgets.

A precinct of stores frequented by shoppers lured by labels, Little Collins Street is still worth a visit. In between frock shops you'll find musty stores selling classic film posters, antique and estate jewelry, and Australian opals. The glittering St. Collins Lane draws less mainstream, higher-end designers, while the eastern end of Collins Street, beyond the cream-and-red Romanesque facade of St. Michael's Uniting Church, is the Paris End, a name coined by Melburnians to identify the elegance of its fashionable shops as well as its general hauteur. Here you find big-name international designer clothing, bags, and jewelry. Its newest precinct, the 80 Collins Street, hosts such curios as sustainable cobblers and luxury eye-wear designers between cafés, new hotels, and swanky restaurants.

Craft Victoria fosters creativity with seminars and exhibits, and has a top-notch selection of Australian pottery, textile works, and jewelry for sale. The not-for-profit design group also runs free exhibitions and interviews with makers of contemporary, sustainable craft and design.

This big, upmarket department store has a large array of luxury brands for both men and women.

Many international brands established their first Australian outlets at this major shopping mall in the city center. The mall is filled with fashion, technology, food, and art outlets, and joined via aboveground glass walkways to the Myer and David Jones department stores and the Bourke Street mall to the south, and Melbourne Central shopping center heading north. International stores include Michael Kors and Victoria's Secret, and Australian designers are well represented, including RM Williams, Scanlan Theodore, sass & bide, and Camilla. Coffee is always close to hand and there are several upmarket food courts—on the fourth floor, Tetsujin's sushi train has great city views.

Dotted with chic boutiques fighting for space amongst top-end cafés, bars, and restaurants, many of them selling merchandise by up-and-coming Australian designers, Flinders Lane will keep fashionistas happy. Between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets, look for Cathedral Arcade, home to vintage and designer stores, in the bottom of the Nicholas Building. The lift leads to an eclectic collection of tiny shops full of unique fashion and accessories. Flinders Lane will try to divert you with walls of colorful street art.

Bespoke shoemaker Hassett sells handmade leather belts, satchels, and wallets, many made from kangaroo leather. Much of Theo Hassett's leather is sourced from Greenhalgh Tannery in Ballarat, which specializes in tanning with wattle tree bark. On the premises you'll also find a café and a barbershop.

Here you'll find a dizzying complex of predominantly high-street brands that's huge enough to enclose an 1880s redbrick shot tower (once used to make bullets) in its atrium. The Ella (Elizabeth and La Trobe Streets) corner is a tangle of hole-in-the-wall eats, coffee roasters, the excellent Blackhearts & Sparrows bottle shop, and acclaimed cocktail bar BYRDIE (try the wattleseed Negroni).

Myer is one of the country's largest department stores, carrying myriad casual and luxury brands for men and women.

Opened in 1870, this is Melbourne's oldest shopping plaza. It remains a lovely place to browse and is home to the splendid Gaunt's Clock, which tolls away the hours.

The shops and eateries at this spectacular riverside location are a short walk from both the city center, across the Ponyfish Island pedestrian bridge (slip down the stairs halfway across the bridge to find one of the city's best-placed bars, Ponyfish), and the Arts Center. There's outdoor seating next to the Southbank promenade.