Villa Moda Mall

Villa Moda, located on Gulf Street, Dasman and overlooking the Kuwait towers is a luxury department store, featuring fashion and clothing items from top designers. The mall is owned by the Sheikh majed Al-Sabah, the 35-year-old nephew of Kuwait's Amir and the new Villa moda is designed by the award winning Italian architect Pierfransesco cravel. The building is a glass box divided internally into fashion "aquariums." For its big-spending, fashion-forward clientele, Villa Moda is not just another multi-label designer store; it is a way of life with revolutionary concept of retail therapy.

The new Villa Moda is a 23,000-square-foot see-through society playground with glass-cube emporium; there are ten stand-alone brand-specific areas including those for Bottega, Veneta, Gucci, Fendi, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana along with Vertu, the luxury communications company, and two multi-brand shops. The place is great as shoppers get designer goods with no taxes and the experience is made for those willing to spend. The recent studies suggest that in Villa Moda, people spend an average of $600 per visit and stop by three times a week to get first crack at the Gucci slingbacks and the Fendi fur bags. For fitness enthusiasts, Villa Moda also has a spa with a "Botox bar."

Villa moda has few stand-alone designer boutiques and operates boutiques directly for big flagship stores which are designed by the brands along with their interiors all according to brand specification which include Bottega, Veneta, Gucci, Fendi, Ferragamo, and Miu Miu. The mall also has "multi-brand" shops, one each for men and women, stocked with high-end to smaller luxury brands—from Dolce & Gabbana and Missoni to Japan's Junya Watanabe and Australian designer Easton Pearson. There is nothing fake about Villa Moda products. They also sold last year's merchandise at considerably low prices in their clearance sales. A café serves halal snacks and fresh fruit juices.

Shoppers don’t have to stand in monotonous and tiresome lines: they are given an electronic card to scan the price tags of items they want to purchase. Their purchases are then gathered, wrapped, and transported to their chauffeured BMW's. Arab techno music pumps through the mall in Saturday nights. There are plans to open a men's lounge soon; the men's club aside, Villa Moda remains mostly a get-together place for Kuwait's women and most of them return day after day. Al-Sabah has ambitious hopes for the future of Villa Moda with expansion plans to open few more boutiques in the region in the next 4 months.

How to get there

From Downtown Kuwait city, drive east on Arabian Gulf Street to reach the Port of Shuwaikh where a six-lane street that follows the curve of Kuwait Bay then Pass by the Kuwait Towers, and after 15 minutes, you arrive at the magnificent industrial port that is the uncharacteristic setting for one of the world's most unusual shopping malls, Villa Moda.