I’m no expert on Bali fashion but anyone who has shopped these famous streets of Kuta, Legian and Seminyak knows that Milo Migliavacca is the progenitor of the colorful, batik inspired, flowy clothing that screams Bali.  Milo’s has been around since 1973 both with island retail and a huge export business.  At any dinner party you will no doubt find at least one woman who has, at some point in her career on Bali, worked with Milo.

Bali has always been a shopping mecca.  Fashion and home furnishing stores really push the edge, and walking the streets, popping in to this and that one, has always been an exercise in training the eye, upping the creativity quotient, filling a wardrobe or revamping the decor of a house.  Prices are great and the product is fun.  A stay in Bali has always included a good dose of retail therapy.

Five of us went shopping yesterday morning and, in no time at all, it was as if the locusts had descended.  These coastal towns are unrecognizable if you have not been here the last ten years; the jumble of stores – most of them selling easy, breezy beachwear at stunningly low prices – is enough to give you sight overload.  Armed with a carefully drawn list of friends’ favorite shops, we began our stalk.  Sidewalks are not only narrow but in disrepair, so the eyes have to do a kind of continuous sweep from footing to shop windows on this, and then on that, side of the street.  Motorcycles risk clipping you if you don’t pay attention.  It’s all very exciting.  And then you light on Lily Jean, with its deliciously simple, jerseyesque dresses and tops in sorbet colors and costing a fraction of Uniqlo, and the temperatures rise.  It’s important to slow down and remember ones manners, to greet the helpful sales girls in the traditional way before scooping up hangars and heading to the dressing room.  And so it goes..from one shop to the next, skipping over the billabongs, quicksilvers, and nasi-selling warungs, following the xeroxed map until alighting on the next gem.  It is so much fun, and all a bit exhausting.

After the purchases have been made, there is some alteration to be done.  Down the alleyway off the main shopping drag is a tailor, we are told.  And there she is, this lovely Indonesian Mama in an old dilapidated Balinese house, surrounded by chickens and kittens and a pup, by children running on and off her verandah where she sits behind an ancient sewing machine.  “Can you do some tailoring for us?” we ask.  And with that she hems both pairs of trousers while we wait, charging us $1.50 a pair.  We give her $5, hug goodbye, and reemerge from old Bali into the shopping madness of Seminyak.

A few of our favorites:  Lily Jean, Biasa (both men and women’s shops) Paul Ropp