From haute couture to thrift, bargain to mega-brands, California's shopping is as varied as the sun-blessed state’s topography. Indeed, it’s perhaps little surprise the state that gave the world Disneyland and Hollywood has elevated shopping to a form of high entertainment.

Forget the British notion of a drizzly afternoon spent rummaging in the bottom of a bargain basement bin: many of California’s best shopping experiences are to be found in the state’s mushrooming new outdoor malls, where California’s outdoorsy ethos marries ideally with the unfettered opportunity to burn your AmEx like an over-caffeinated Hilton heir.

One of the glitziest among the new generation of California’s open-air supermalls, the palm-scattered Garden Walk in Anaheim, Orange County (opening May 2008) will offer 400,000 square feet of shops and restaurants set along manicured garden walkways, including the best of the US brands: Banana Republic, ALDO Accessories, White House/Black Market and Ann Taylor Loft. The recently revamped Carmel Plaza, in Carmel, California also offers an idyllic outdoors setting, with trickling fountains, fronds aplenty and on-site concierges to show you the ropes and spirit your shopping bags to your hotel.

If it’s quirky shopping you’re after, San Francisco’s a good bet. The eight-block Haight Ashbury may have lost the edge that made it the nexus of the hippies in the late 1960s, but it retains its concentration of countercultural bookstores, laid-back cafés and thrift stores. The Lower Haight (around Filmore Street) houses the best shops, including the DJ and club culture shops opened by the British club kid immigrants who’ve arrived in recent years.

Or, for something you can’t buy back at home, try Shasta Cascade’s glass-blowing stores, Sonoma County’s artisan cheese stores, the art galleries and antique shops of Monterey, the jewellery and ceramic boutiques in Laguna Beach or (if you’re thinking of sending a shipping container home) the famous iron garden ornaments in Redding.

Unsurprisingly for a city held up as the exemplar of haute consumerism, Los Angeles offers manifold opportunities to flex your healthy sterling/dollar exchange rate at one of the sprawling city’s numerous department stores (Macys being the king), massive malls or the stars’ favourite shopping strip, Rodeo Drive. The City Walk Mall at Universal Studios is a popular, if anodyne, choice for out-of-town shoppers. West Hollywood’s Beverly Center , at Beverly and La Cienaga boulevards focuses on mega-brands beloved of Californians (such as Hugo Boss, Sephora, Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein). You’ll find many of the city’s funkier boutiques line Melrose Avenue between La Brea and Fairfax avenues.

On Rodeo Drive, indubitably America’s most famous shopping street, you’ll get to rub shoulders with celebrities and, unless you have an A-lister-worthy income, peer through the shimmering sheet glass windows into the Dior, Chanel, Armani, Valentino and Gucci boutiques. Don’t miss Bijan (420 Rodeo Drive), famed for being the most expensive store in the world, where the average customer spends $100,000 per visit (you’ll need to make an appointment just to enter and get a peek at their $50 socks). Other opportunities to spot shopping celebs across the State include San Francisco’s glitzy Union Street, San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter or West Hollywood’s Avenues of Art and Design.

Venice Beach, West of LA and best known for its Ocean Walk, the stamping ground of super buff nut-brown musclemen, is also home to Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a hip shopping district that’s a refreshing antidote to LA’s gilded shopping districts. It showcases the designs of homegrown artists and designers, including the fairytale fashions of Coryn Madley and Stronghold, a brand of hard-wearing denim worn by Charlie Chaplin in the 1930s that’s fast making a comeback.

If your budget’s more Oxfam than Uma Thurman, try one of the many Premium Outlet malls dotted throughout the state. Outlet malls – their out-of-town locations keeping the cost of retail space low – offer manufacturers the opportunity to sell directly to the public through their own branded stores, with a focus on clothing, sporting goods, electrical products, cosmetics and toys. San Diego County is an outlet mall hotspot, including the Viejas Outlet Center in Alpine, tucked away in the picturesque mountains east of San Diego city; the Carlsbad Premium Outlets located at a stone’s throw from the Pacific ocean beaches and Legoland theme park and Las Americas Premium Outlets, on the sunbaked San Diego/Tijuana Mexico border.

The desert city of Palm Springs is also happily served for outlet malls, including the side-by-side Cabazon Outlets and the Desert Hills Premium outlets, both in Cabazon. The Citadel Outlets are the best-placed outlet malls for Los Angeles and Orange County and is gloriously kitsch in an all-American way, its exterior designed to resemble the Babylonian palace of King Sargon II. Only in America.