My Düsseldorf Shopping Haul: H&M, GinaTricot, Drogerie Markt & More! [And Video]

Gotta love my facial expression here…lol. A still from my haul video which you can watch below

So I spent four days in lovely Düsseldorf for Karneval partaking in festivities and getting to know the city. You can see everything about that here. One thing Düsseldorf is known for is its shopping—man, oh man is the shopping there good. Like I mentioned in this post, it’s an extremely walkable city—you can practically walk everywhere and what’s great about the shopping is that everything is pretty much all in the same area. You have your pick from high end designers like Prada, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton to high street stores like H&M, Primark, and Office.

When I said shopping is pretty big in Düsseldorf, I’m not kidding. I stayed at the fabulous Breidenbacher Hof hotel right on the Königsallee which is also home to rows and rows of shopping. Right after I landed Friday morning (I got in around 8 AM) I wandered into the Schadow Arkaden shopping center after I realized my camera was missing to check out the camera shop inside. This mall appeared to be huge but I didn’t have a ton of time to really scope it out so I breezed through H&M where I bought a cute moto jacket (I needed a new one since my old one is too big for me now—heyyyy) for €39,99 (about $45USD). I was SO happy that the Euro and the US dollar were pretty close in value so I didn’t have to whip out my conversion app to figure stuff out…lol. I was walking by tons of stores and practically having a breakdown that I couldn’t go inside because I knew I needed to get back to the hotel to get ready to meet up with my group for our tour…lol.

Trying on my H&M finds in my hotel and inside H&M. It was NOT warm enough for the crop top…lol. I had a big sweater over it.

When I finally got some free time (about two hours) I hit as many stores as I could on Flingerstraße, a street lined with tons of high street stores. I quickly hit up another H&M (what? I’m a fiend—thought you knew…lol) and got this long cardigan for €29,99 (about $34 USD), leggings with crosses on the sides for €14,99 (didn’t see them on the US H&M site but see them on me above), and a basic black tee because a girl’s gotta have her basic black tees. Then I zipped into Mango and bought another biker jacket on sale for €24,99 ($29.99 which was a steal because the same jacket was like $80 at the 34th street Mango here in NYC. I also popped into Office but didn’t see anything then slid into ginatricot and got an oversized grey clutch. I did pretty good with the little time that I had. There was also a department store directly across the street from my hotel that I didn’t get to go into either.

In terms of shopping, Düsseldorf is like a shopper’s dream come true and I didn’t even get to see it all. I missed Primark (still salty about it, too…lol) and I’m sure a dozen other stores we don’t have here in the U.S. I was also told there’s a whole district where there’s really good consignment stores but again, didn’t have time (and probably didn’t have the money to get anything anyway…lol). There’s also the Düsseldorf Bilk Arcaden which I passed by on Carnival Monday but couldn’t go into because it was closed and it was Carnival…lol. You can see more Düsseldorf shopping here.

Then of course I had to check out the beauty! There were a couple of Douglas stores nearby—Douglas is like Ulta in that they have high end brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Sensai Kanebo, Dior, Giorgio Armani, etc. as well as drugstore brands. Some even have a MAC counter inside. Many of the brands sold in Douglas are the same brands we have in the U.S. so I focused on trying to find German brands. I quickly learned about a brand called Art Deco which is a pretty popular German beauty brand and read that their Eyeshadow Base is pretty good so I got that plus two eyeshadows. They come similar to like Inglot’s Freedom Palette system but the shadow singles are really small as you can see from the pics.

Then the morning before I was to head to the airport, I popped into the Drogerie Markt (DM) which as you may guess is a drugstore…lol. But it’s like a drugstore to the tenth degree because you can get so many great skincare and hair items for under 1 Euro. I went a little ham because I was pretty much just throwing stuff into my basket. I had to quickly try to decipher what some things were based on some sounding similar to English words and then knowing what some ingredients do. Some of the popular brands (besides the obvious Nivea) seemed to be Balea, Fa, Catrice Cosmetics, Essence Cosmetics, Schwarzkopf, Alverde, Astor, and a few more I’m sure I missed. I got a lip and eye mask, a bunch of peeling masks, hand creams, oil hair repair treatments, and some L’Oreal Elnett hairspray because while we have it here in the U.S. (there was a time when we didn’t :x) it was MUCH cheaper in Germany than what I see it go for in drugstores here. I do wish I would have checked to see which Nivea products were available in Germany that we don’t have in the U.S. but again: no time…lol. There were other brands like Weleda, Vichy, La Roche Posay, Dr. Hauschka, etc. that I spotted in many of the pharmacies but since those brands can be found here as well I passed because of time constraints.

As far as makeup from DM I didn’t get many color products. It seems as if the color cosmetics in the drugstores are more muted and neutral so they weren’t really going to show up on my skin tone like I wanted. I’m guessing folks just go to MAC and Douglas for brighter colors. If you have darker skin and live in Düsseldorf, my guess is you’ll hit up places like MAC for darker foundations. Not sure if they have a black | UP there or perhaps in other parts of Germany. It would be interesting for me to go back and check out all the makeup options for women of color around the world and report on it—hmm…maybe for my next trip….lol.

I’m trying to get into video making more [may the force be with me…lol] so I shot a video of me talking through my purchases. I actually shot three videos but the first one was wayyyy too long (11 minutes—not the longest haul video but I wouldn’t watch an 11-minute haul video so why would I make one…lol) and then the second time I messed up (not trying to spend hours editing stuff…lol) and then the third was perfect timing wise but then I realized the products on the desk were out of focus but by then I was running out of time so I just went with it…lol. I have pictures of all the products in this post so you can get a better idea. Let me know if you want to see more videos :)

Have you shopped lately? What did you get? Have questions? Hit me in the comments!