The Marina Mall, Kuwait

After a day melting in the 50°C heat of Kuwait, your roving reporter decided to visit the Marina Mall, one of 3 big shopping centres in the region (The Avenues and 360° are its 2 younger counterparts). Kuwait as a whole struck me as considerably more conservative than Dubai, its brother of bling, which I found surprising as its 2 and a half million local population are probably far wealthier due to the oil revenue (just a guess).

On arriving at the mall it was deserted, probably because at 6pm it was still 42°C outside – mad dogs and Englishman and all that… Anyway, as it got later the locals arrived in their droves. Even though its only 6 years old, I found the centre tired and drab in places, maybe because I have spent too much time in Dubai looking at shark tanks and waterfall features. There are, however, some excellent franchised stores there, River Island looked great in the awkward space its been allocated, Massimo Dutti was immaculate as usual and there’s a huge H&M with a great in store vibe (probably due to the great merchandising team).

There were some weird moments too; being sprayed with women’s perfume in the Virgin store (didn’t they go bust – Richard Branson would be horrified) and then bumping into a statue of The Joker in the same store. I was disappointed with the Diesel store too, with a very strange stock mix, most of which I have never seen before. However, the high level jeans display and the ‘first bite’ and the general high standard of VM made up for it as did the fabulous ranges of men’s watches (some as much as £500).

The general standard of VM seemed lacking in store; however, a lot of the windows were better with a widespread use of abstract mannequin ranges that looked like they had received a relatively high level of dressing.
Overall, I was a little disappointed at some of the conservative and lacklustre standard of some of the stores, surprised at the lack of many genuine premium brands too. But then again it could have been a symptom of being Dubai’d out! Too much bling, so little time!