Mexico City Shops

180°'s real allure comes from its mix of up-and-coming local clothing and design brands. You'll find Alejandra Quesada dresses, printed jumpsuits, jackets from Carolina K, bikes by Saintvelo, designer chocolate bars from Casa Bosques, and magazines, books, and zines from local publishers.

Housed in a whitewashed, renovated home in the Roma and decorated with sleek bookshelves, casually placed Jean Prouvé chairs, succulents, and ferns, Casa Bosques offers a curated selection of indie magazines, journals, and books from small publishers. Their selection goes way beyond what you'll find in any of the city's more established bookshops and is a godsend for anyone interested in fashion, art, and design, as independent titles like The Gentlewoman, Apartamento, AnOther, Purple are hard to come by. Visitors are invited to leaf through the titles and make themselves comfortable in the homey space.

If there's one designer who has managed to take traditional Mexican embroidery and textile techniques and make them contemporary—it's Carla Fernández. She's spent years traveling the country establishing partnerships with some of the best indigenous artisans to make her bold, geometric designs.

Long silk dresses, draped trousers and culottes, and delicate blouses are the kind of feminine pieces you'll find at Peruvian designer Sandra Weil's flagship store. Located in Polanco, near salons and design boutiques, you can also find her elegant line of wedding dresses here, hanging in a beautiful system of vertical plywood racks designed by the up-and-coming architects Zeller y Moye. If you can't find what you're looking for, you can enlist her couture service to tweak any of her designs just for you.

Savvy Studio is the design and branding studio that came up with the concept for this boutique shopping experience, bringing fashion, food, tea, and design into one locale in Polanco. Of course, they've designed most of the space, too. Here you can shop for ultra pared down clothing and accessories by the likes of Gabriela Artigas and Trista at Avery, leaf through hard-to-find art and design titles at Casa Bosques, check out the latest design trends at Galeria Mexicana de Diseño and finish up with a gourmet tea at Tomás and snacks from Villa de Patos.

Francisco Cancino's line of sleek, pared down women's clothing is a big hit among Mexico's magazine editors, and we can see why. First there are the elegant, season-less silhouettes that make his clothing a wardrobe perennial, and then there's the fact that it's all handmade by artisans across the country. Check out Yakampot's sister brand, Arroz con Leche, for adorable kids clothes.

The brainchild of Maggie Galton, a NYC transplant who spent years working with artisans across the country, and business brain Maria Eladia Hagerman, Onora sells beautiful handicrafts designed for contemporary homes. Their palette is restrained to black, white, grey, beige, and the occasional pop of color, and the products themselves are exquisite. They carry black clay candleholders from Oaxaca, table runners from Chiapas, serving dishes from Puebla, and much more—this shop makes us want to start over and redecorate.

Rodrigo Rivero Lake's office in a penthouse apartment in Polanco is kind of insane, packed to the brim with museum quality antiques from Mexico, India, and beyond, along with paintings and sculptures by major modern Mexican artists. An incurable collector, he's spent a lifetime on the hunt both in Mexican flea markets, at European auction houses, and on the road in India. On the weekends, he heads to the Lagunilla Antiques Market in Mexico city, where all the vendors know him by name, and always have a thing or two to show him. He's also written the book on the influence of Japanese artisanry on Mexican Viceregal antiquities: It's heady stuff and might seem intimidating, but Rodrigo is a totally charming, welcoming host to anyone who visits his gallery. Ask enough questions and he'll give you a special tour of the space—he once showed us a trove of paintings by his old friend and fellow antiquarian Chucho Reyes, one of the most influential Mexican painters of the 20th Century. It's by appointment only and so worth it.

This is probably one of the best shops for high-quality Mid-Century antiques in the city, as owners Cecilia Tena and Lucía Corredor split time between Berlin and New York buying and importing their finds back to their shop in CDMX. You'll find retro credenzas, Herman Miller tables and chairs, Anglepoise-style lamps, and everything you need to stock a vintage bar—all in great condition and displayed in inspiring vignettes. The owners were living in Berlin when they got the idea to open up a vintage shop in Mexico city, hoping to bring a little bit of its playfulness into modern Mexican interiors.

On Saturdays, as the name implies, one of the most delightful things you can do is head over to the sleepy, cobble-stoned streets of San Angel to shop in this grand old colonial plaza. It's jam-packed with artists and artisans who sell their wares here week after week, including paper flowers, embroidered blouses, tin toys, carved Pepita glass, etc. Plus, there's a restaurant inside serving solid quesadillas (though there's also a street stand right outside that out-does these), and right across the street is the weekly artist's street market, where there are some good finds to be made.