There are so many shopping options in NYC it is easy to get overwhelmed just thinking about a place to make your first purchase. The big three are Barneys(660 Madison Avenue), Macy's (151 West 34th street) and Bloomingdale's(1000 3rd Avenue), where you can get anything from platinum suits to Keds footwear.

For the urban look, Broadway between 4th street and Canal is home to quintessentially cool shops like American Apparel (712 Broadway), Yellow Rat Bastard (478 Broadway) and Aldo Shoes (579 Broadway). The Lower East Side, East Village and Williamsburg all have a growing population of speciality boutiques, home-grown fashion stores and vintage clothing shops. Here, you'll find the very NYC, very of-the- moment styles at places like Metalweight (174 North 11th Street), a fashionable jewellery shop; Forward (72 Orchard Street), a showroom/work house for just-landed designers; and Filth Mart (531 East 13th Street), where Liv Tyler and Stella McCartney broke the Rock Royalty T-shirts.

For arguably the most upscale shopping experience in the world, fat back-pocket spenders need look no further than 5th and Madison Avenues. It is here that you will find the establishments of Prada (841 Madison Avenue), Saks 5th Avenue (611 5th Avenue), Tiffany & Co (5th Avenue at 57th Street), Baccarat (625 Madison Avenue) and Valentino (747 Madison Avenue). This list goes on and on, suffice it to say you could apparel a small country with the shops located on these two avenues, and rid yourself of more money than its national GDP.

SoHo is no slouch when it comes to fabulous shopping, either. Designer Anna Suihas set up shop here (113 Greene Street), as well as Nicole Miller (134 Prince Street) and Yohji Yamamoto (103 Grand Street).

For a peek at how the jet-setters shop, Jeffery's (449 West 14th Street) in the Meatpacking/Chelsea district more often than not has a stretch limousine pulled up out in front of it. Footwear can reach $600 per shoe, and T-shirts routinely sell for $1,000.

B&H Photo and Video (420 9th Avenue) has just about every technical gadget you could possibly want, and many that you never knew existed. The same can be said about Zabars (2245 Broadway) speciality food store, though they are limited to food.