Vegas, California, Zoran and Alaia
My trip to Las Vegas was wrapped up by taking a stroll around the ritzy hotels of The Wynn and The Palazzo. Both were highly luxurious hotels to stroll in with the biggest names in the industry with some unique boutiques such as Oscar de la Renta, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Van Cleef & Arpels, Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin. Needless to say, all the stores were out of my price range, but still walking through these beautiful hotels was worth the trip.
It’s a beautiful smoggy morning in sunny California
Yes, smog is a huge problem in the state of California. An hour away from LA I could already see the smog hazily hanging over the rolling golden California mountains. The traffic is incredible, I’ve never seen so many cars in one area. However, spending much time here can easily make you forget that there’s smog in the air since you have to really be on the outskirts of the city to see it.
CityCenter: Las Vegas 2.0
I’m going on a trip to Las Vegas, LA and San Francisco next week, and hopefully I’ll have enough time to properly blog this time. My trip to Japan was great, but I didn’t have any energy left to blog since I was exhausted of the 5hr walking trips I’d take every day.
Had I known that Las Vegas had signed a whopping $9 billion deal to create perhaps the most luxurious retail space in North America, I would’ve postponed my trip til next year. According to WWD, CityCenter is an 18 million square feet of commercial space that will include over 70 retailers, a 61-story, 4,000-room gaming resort; three luxury nongaming hotels, and a 5000 square foot “flower carpet” where flowers will be changed daily. CityCenter will feature The Crystals - 500,000 square foot of retail space. And I thought our H&M’s 15,000 square feet of space was big. Perhaps there’s a reason why I’m not in architecture right? Most of the well known luxury brands will take up space in this new project including a 10,000 sq.ft for Tiffany’s, and the second largest Louis Vuitton store in North America. Nevermind that many of these retailers already have several store locations in the city.
Frankly, I’m split two ways about it. One is that I’m majorily curious as to what these fanciful places look like (so far they all look the same either in the US or in Japan’s Ginza district). Plus, will they make a profit from all this construction? Second, $9 billion dollars? Is it really necessary to have a repeat of the same luxury retailers? Do you know where all that good money can be used for to help poorer countries? This is what’s contradicting of the luxury world, you have all this money, and you’re always seeking more of it when you very well know you could perhaps donate a few dollars - ok, thousands, hell, millions of dollars - for charities and such.
We will see next year. For now, I will be making rounds in Vegas and dutifully make observations on the shopping experience. I haven’t been to Vegas since I was 12, and back then I was confined to the Circus Circus arcades where I wasted many hours of my youth fending for raffle tickets that would get me at most a toy water gun. I was even told by my mum that the Golden Strip “didn’t exist” when I had asked her about it.
San Francisco should be lovely as I heard so many good things about it. My stop in the LA area would be more so on the beaches of Santa Monica, I’m not really interested in LA to be honest. All that Hollywood gossip is such a turn off.
Image credits: CityCenter (artist rendition)
