Date: 10.14.2002
Looking for an exotic sofa? You've come to the right place. Bring cunning, though--and cash. The lowest dregs of today's popular "North African look"--crude iron lamps and sconces, jewelry with plastic stones, ham-handedly hewn tables--can be had cheaply and easily enough at the nearest mall. For the good stuff, though, you'll have to hop a plane to Marrakech. To haggle, fend off venal guides and maybe part with some real money. You'll also need to drink lots of mint tea--it's one currency of negotiation and it helps you stay awake.
What's your payoff? The expression of envy mingled with disbelief that will cloud friends' faces when they come into your home and see wonders not stocked at Ottomans "R" Us: a mother-of-pearl and camel-bone dresser ($2,100), a 100-year-old hand-painted wedding chest ($600), or, most outrageous of all, a chartreuse-and-pink leather footstool--with fur accents ($100). In Morocco a little shrewdness and planning (plus a plump wallet) will net you dazzling works of art in textiles, furniture and pottery, in leather, silk and bone.
We made the trip ourselves recently and returned laden with treasures and advice. Tip number one: Don't use a guide. Or rather, use one sparingly. Every concierge will tell you it's impossible to negotiate without a guide, but the reverse is true: It's impossible with one. Under a kickback system as crooked as Marrakech's streets, guides will take you only to merchants from whom they themselves can get the fattest tips. These may not be the shops you need to visit.
We found this out the hard way, after having booked our trip through a Seattle travel service, AutoVenture, whose package included car, driver and guide. We paid $1,286 for two half-days of shopping and driving around Morocco.
Our guide charmed us at first. He gave us free bottled water, a free cell phone and a complimentary lunch. But in Marrakech, as in Duluth, there is no free lunch. When he refused to take us where our research told us the finest goods were sold, we canned him. (For sources of information on shopping in Morocco, visit www.forbes.com/morocco.)
Going guideless, however, creates its own problem: a constant barrage of men begging to be hired. So, when we found one willing to take orders, we retained him--purely as a guide-repellent--for $5 an hour.
Marrakech and Fez (a five-hour drive apart) were our destinations, being centers for the handicraft trade. If you consider them as beehives, their honey lies in little combs--tiny shops called souks--located inside the medina (or old city) of both towns. Here rug-weaving, ironworking, woodcarving and other trades thrive in ways barely changed since Andalusian refugees introduced them more than 400 years ago.
When deciding what to buy, we used the "Zip Code Test"--a strategy designed to save you from buying something that looks fabulous in its native setting but may look absurd in, say, Scarsdale, N.Y. When New York art collector Yvonne Force Villareal, who was along on this shopping trip (and whose fashion sense has repeatedly landed her in Vogue), found goat-fur slippers that fit her "code," she bought nine pairs--for $20 each.
Keep in mind that shopkeepers are doing their own version of this test, guessing how much you can pay based on where they think you' re from. If you speak a language other than English, speak it, since they regard all Anglos as spendthrifts. Also try to sidestep the seemingly polite question, "Where you are staying?" Giving the name of a great hotel like La Mamounia (see box) will only move you into a higher bracket. Make sure, too, that your guide is absent, so he cannot divulge (in Arabic) information you'd rather not disclose.
Once you've assembled the items you want, find out the inflated starting price and pout; or, if that's not your style, express disappointment, and explain you couldn't possibly pay more than one-quarter to one- third as much. Expect a counteroffer. If there isn't one, walk.
Usually, an arm will be slung around your shoulder, and a real effort will be made to reach common ground: "Excuse me, Madame, I will make you a very good price!" Mint tea (a courtesy accorded only serious shoppers) will be offered--or maybe more: After we had proved our mettle at one antique store in Marrakech, the owner whipped out a lemony and fragrant beef stew.
Being guideless but not guileless, we scored bargains. Prices for kilims, the richly colored, lightweight rugs of the nomadic tradition, currently are at a 20-year low for collector-quality pieces. Older ones can be had for a few thousand dollars. Newer ones cost several hundred. We snapped up a new 6-by-9-foot beauty, faded to look old, for $500. A good place to buy the older ones is in Fez, at Au Merveilles du Tapis, housed in a 19th-century mosaic-walled palace. While it is a government-sponsored store, you can still bargain down 10% to 20%.
In Marrakech we went to Beldi, a jewel of a little shop filled with exquisite pillow covers and raw silk caftans. While prices seem steep--$500 for a quilted silk bed covering--they'd be double in the U.S. At Caverne de Tissage hand-loomed silk tablecloths in beautiful stripes were priced at $200 each. We subjected them not only to the Zip Code Test but to the more rigorous Anne Bass Test: Could we imagine the multimillionaire Texan daintily holding her fork over the lovely purple fabric? We could. So we hammered down the price to $65 and bought six. At Al Badii we bought two oversize brass candlesticks ($210), plus the old chest and the amazing mother-of-pearl dresser described above. Similar items, were they available in the U.S., would have cost many thousands more.
They're not available, though, and that's the point: Morocco is a storehouse of rare furnishings you can't find at home. When at last we stumbled across our much-beloved and exquisitely weird footstool- -the chartreuse-and-pink leather job trimmed in fur--its maker asked $100. We paid $100. It seemed wrong to quibble with an artist who had given birth to something so unique.
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