The best fashion and gift stores Berlin & Brandenbourg

This small, committed French bookstore is located in the heart of the former squatter's quarter, which has become a tourist and bourgeois district, and is valiantly trying to resist the onslaught of gentrification. You'll find the great literary classics, but you'll also find more specialized books on Berlin. A wide range of novels, comics, and children's books. The bookstore is bright, and the booksellers are a good source of advice.

To continue the cultural adventure at the exit of the Museum Island or at the bend of a stroll in the district of Mitte, this very charming bookstore, small in size but young and bright, welcomes you and offers you a beautiful assortment of books and magazines from all over the world. The themes of architecture, photography and design are particularly well represented, making it an institution in this district rich in art galleries. In the same street, just across the street, you will find, for example, the very remarkable Galerie Deschler.

Designer and lover of vintage, Marita Schwalm offers in her shop a beautiful range of clothes, shoes, leather goods, decorative objects and even furniture from the 1950s to the 1980s: a joyful foutreras that will delight enthusiasts! The house also offers the possibility to rent jewellery, furniture, clothes, lamps to professionals for films, shootings, advertisements, clips but also to private individuals for costume or theme evenings!

The unconditional meeting place for hipsters, young hipsters and urban fashion lovers. This shop that combines music (vinyl and CD) and fashion has chosen its neighbourhood well, just a stone's throw from Boxhagener Platz. You'll find second-hand records and a beautiful collection of sneakers, all of which will make you look like Berlin fashion. Amongst the brands that are favoured here are: Patagonia, Pinqponq, The North Face, Carhartt, etc.The prices are still quite high. And since you were wondering: HHV are the initials for Hip Hop Vinyl.

This is a huge shop, well known to Berlin's many artists and creative people. There's an art bookstore (with some very nice books about Berlin), a general bookstore, but above all on two levels there are displays of dozens of materials for painting, drawing, sewing, and other disciplines in the do-it-yourself art family. Here you will find every pencil, brush, spray, cloth, tool and accessory imaginable. Everything for the artist in you.

This is one of the busiest flea markets in Berlin (and yet the competition is tough here!). It is divided in two: on the one hand, a "classic" flea market with all sorts of trinkets (Trödel is German for "bric-a-brac") and other dust-pickers, more antiques than real flea markets and, on the other hand, an arts and crafts market where artists but also graphic designers or handymen sell their works. There are toilets and food-trucks.

A store entirely dedicated to menswear installed since 1999 in the Kastanienalle, anticipating by a few years the movement of gentrification that was going to hit the whole street. We will come there for the small selection of extremely rare sneakers. And then also for the Eisdieler T-shirts with Berlin designs as original as they are interesting and artistic. They're unique. It's a far cry from the tourist T-shirts I love Berlin. Otherwise, watches, gloves, wallets and sunglasses are also sold here. Everything you need for a makeover.

Opened in 2018, this shopping center hosts more than 100 stores spread over three floors and a 24-hour parking lot right next to the Warschauer Straße train station. There are the usual mall stores: boutiques, supermarkets, banks, gym... The center recently opened a bee colony on the top floor of the parking lot in collaboration with the organization Stadtbienen.org, which raises awareness about bees and biodiversity by offering educational courses on maintaining bees in the urban space.