What's the world's best city for shopping - London or Paris?

By Mal Chenu

It was the best of buys, it was the worst of buys. The sales of two cities makes this a tough choice.

We all know that shopping really means clothes, and London and Paris are both fashionable destinations. For every Chanel, there's a Burberry. For every Christian Dior, there's a Vivienne Westwood. Both cities are chic, and have lots of awesome and overpriced fashion, handbags, shoes, jewellery, homewares and beauty products, so basically it comes down to service.

London's fabled luxury department stores, such as Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols, are well known for their sycophancy. Personal shopping services are readily available and London has made these into an art fawn. On the other side of the Channel (pardon moi, La Manche), the notoriously snooty French boutique sales assistantes won't find your Aussie accent endearing. Many will treat you like you are some sort of Anglo-trash who can't convert Euros.

Wherever you splurge - the West End and Carnaby, Kensington High Street and Sloane Square, St James's, Covent Garden, Chelsea, Soho or Shoreditch - you'll uncover numerous justifications to buy another suitcase for the trip home. London may not have a monopoly on great shopping but with retail hubs like Bond Street, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Park Lane and Mayfair, it sure sounds like it. Why take a chance on Paris? Why settle for second prize in the beauty contest?

Oxford Street alone has more than 90 shops spread over 2.5 kilometres, including Selfridges, House of Fraser, Urban Outfitters, Zara and Marks & Spencer, as well as hundreds of nearby restaurants and bars to refresh between retails. Yes, some of these are here, too, but doing it London means you are shopping a season ahead.

London is also home to the most famous department store in the world, the legendary six floors of fabulous that is Harrods of Knightsbridge. The fifth floor is known as Shoe Heaven, and they even have a Prada Caffe.

If you're travelling with ankle biters, Hamleys in Regent Street has seven floors of toys, games and superhero-level pester power, while the largest LEGO store in the world in Leicester Square has a 6.5-metre-tall replica of Big Ben. And you must wander around The Harry Potter Shop at Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station, where the Hogwarts merch flies off the shelves.

Beyond the highs of the high streets, London's markets are filled with the quirky, the eclectic and the delicious. Munch your way through Borough Market in Southwark or Berwick Street Market in Soho, uncover an antique (and Hugh Grant's Notting Hill Bookshop) at Portobello Road and browse for bric-a-brac at Brick Lane Market in East London. Or Camden Market for everything.

By Amy Cooper

This one's a tough call for a Brit shopper so devoted to London's great retail temples that when Selfridges recently started doing weddings, I wished I'd waited. That said, I prefer to part with my pounds on a pilgrimage to Paris. Pourquoi? Because Paris represents shopping the way it should be: decadent, elegant, indulgent, artistic, magnifique. In a word: French.

I defy you not to be wowed by the glorious department store Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, with its soaring tiers of ornate art nouveau galleries beneath a majestic 43-metre stained-glass dome. The 111-year-old coupole is a cherished architectural masterpiece. People come just to gaze up.

Next door, along Boulevard Haussmann, The Printemps flagship store also has a splendid art deco dome, this one exquisitely patterned in sky-blue and gold. Or there's the 1870 belle epoch landmark La Samaritaine, beside the Pont Neuf, with seven floors of designer fashion housed in recently restored palatial splendour. The grands magasins of Paris are cultural landmarks on a scale so extravagant the average cathedral looks like a carpark by comparison. And in these hallowed halls, you're browsing the birthplace of modern shopping.

When Paris's oldest department store, Le Bon Marche opened on the Left Bank in 1852 it gave the world a new concept: shopping as a leisure pursuit or, as the French so poetically put it, art de vivre - art of living. Here, within a stunning building co-designed by Gustave Eiffel himself, were arrayed all kinds of gorgeous goods in a setting that would "thrill the senses".

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And the Paris stores still do. You can disappear for days into Printemps' 44,000 square metres of fashion, beauty and luxury goods. As well as 70,000 square metres of retail heaven, Galeries Lafayette has an entire wellness floor with hammam, sauna, gym and spa. You can take a heritage tour, cooking class or savour Paris skyline views from the rooftop. There's less to do in Disneyland.

Some stroll the Champs-Elysees to see the Arc de Triomphe. Others see it as a mere backdrop to the world's largest Louis Vuitton store, with five levels connected by spiral staircases.

From Rue de Rivoli's rarified retail to emerging designers in Le Marais district, to vintage and indie stores in Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the 3000 traders and endless treasures of Marche aux Puces de St-Ouen, the world's largest flea market, Paris is infinitely shop-able.

But for me, it's about those grands magasins. They're testament to a golden era of bricks and mortar (or rather, domes and deco) shopping, before online retail reduced l'art de vivre to a joyless transaction with a chatbot. In Paris, you can still spend with all the excitement, awe and press-your-nose-against-the-window wonder of a child.

That's priceless.