Crystals at CityCenter

Hollywood should stage the Academy Awards at the new Crystals shopping centre at the CityCenter complex. God knows it’s big enough, with its soaring ceilings and vast expanses of white stone. And all the designer labels favoured by celebrities and socialites are in place: Balenciaga, Dior, Pucci, Gucci and Fendi; Stella McCartney, Paul Smith and Tom Ford; as well as jewellers-to-the-stars Bulgari, Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef and Arpels, Mikimoto and Harry Winston. Between bouts of browsing and buying, there are restaurants by Wolfgang Puck and Todd English (his PUB is a fantastically fun casual saloon), the pan-Asian Social Club and the lavish, retro-futuristic Mastro’s Ocean Club, which perches over the fabulous fray. Since precious few can afford the baubles on display, there’s often plenty of room inside the boutiques, where it’s often ‘look but don’t touch’. But the biggest draw at Crystals, its water-themed public art, is definitely look and touch: one work features giant obelisks of ice that emerge and then slowly melt, creating fantastic shapes and textures via heat, wind, and the touch of thousands of tourists; another offers rainbow-hued whirlwinds within Plexiglas cylinders.