Spend a day shopping in any Swiss city and you'll have no trouble locating all the major fashion brands and international designer names. But there is also a vibrant homegrown design culture - and it is finding favour not just with locals, but also with international visitors seeking products that combine design quirkiness with Swiss production quality.
Zürich's Maurice de Mauriac (48 Todistrasse, mauricedemauriac.ch) is the perfect example of this new breed of Swiss style. The shop is unlike any other Swiss watch shop. There are no pristine, luxurious displays. Instead, watch faces are scattered about somewhat chaotically on tables and shelves among vintage toys, curious design objects and boxes of colourful straps. Charismatic owner Daniel Dreifuss will soon have you surprisingly engaged in a conversation about watch dials, all of which he likes to constantly mix and match on the spot. It's impossible not to fall in love with the shop's special atmosphere.
Another innovative Zürich-based brand is Freitag (17 Geroldstrasse, freitag.ch), which some 10 years ago produced a messenger bag out of discarded truck tarpaulins and old seat belts. The bag became a worldwide cult hit, ending up on display in MoMA in New York, and now Freitag sells more than 150,000 products worldwide each year. The brand has branched out into a whole accessory line, including iPod covers, MacBook wallets, shopping bags and even the odd football, all of which are handmade and unique.
Watch out, too, for up-and-coming Clover, which is turning the stuffy world of golf clothing upside-down with its funky range available in Swiss department stores such as Jelmoli.
St Gallen has historic design roots, having been the embroidery centre of the world, and is today home to the famous Jakob Schlaepfer's embroidery boutique, Bambola (99 Fürstenlandstrasse, jakob-schlaepfer.ch). Schlaepfer is one of the world's finest producers of innovative textiles, specialising in embroideries, sequins, laser-cut and crystal designs, used by leading fashion houses the world over.
On the flipside of fashion is Le Laboratoire (le-laboratoire.com), an underground Swiss fashion label whose boutique in Lausanne offers a more affordable opportunity to buy some Swiss originals. Run by two local female designers, the shop doubles up as a workshop, with the quirky range produced on-site. The pair also run a series of exhibitions for each new season launch.
Another area for spotting edgy Swiss design and architecture is the Sulzer Areal in Winterthur, the imaginatively restored industrial quarter. Here you will find innovative design names such as Platform (7 Lagerplatz, irion.li), which has made a name for itself internationally thanks to its revolutionary storage systems, cutting-edge furniture design and impeccably cool interiors.
