Behold the 25 Most Expensive Stores in the United States

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Here at Racked, we're dedicating this week to the kind of fantastical shopping that most of us only get to experience in dreams (or at 80%-off sample sales). Taking a page from casino parlance, we'll be talking a lot about "whales," those big spenders who feel perfectly comfortable dropping tens of thousands of dollars every night on roulette, or, in our case, on Cartier. Welcome to Whale Week 2013.

Image via Shutterstock

To kick off our very first Whale Week, we bring you a list of the 25 most expensive stores in the United States—or, as we like to think of it, the ultimate guide to shopping like a baller. About half of the shops hail from New York City, including the only two bridal shops to make the list. Los Angeles accounts for most of the rest, with a few remainders scattered around the country in fancy neighborhoods of Boston and Chicago and handful of other well-to-do towns, like Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Naples, Florida.

And who takes home the trophy for the most expensive store in the entire US of A? We'll give you a hint: It's the flagship for a designer who charges $2490 for a baseball jersey. Enjoy after the jump.

To rank the stores, bundle.com looked at proprietary data from 20 million Visa and Mastercard holders plus average receipt amounts based on millions of transactions. Filtering out places like wholesalers, manufacturers, and big department stores, they came up with this list of the most pricey boutiques you can find in the fifty states of America. Here they are:

25. Prada, New York City: $1,429 per visit.

24. Saks Jandel, Chevy Chase, Maryland: $1,457 per visit.

23. Escada, Beverly Hills: $1,466 per visit.

22. Vera Wang Bridal House, New York City: $1,493 per visit.

21. A'Marees, Newport Beach, Rhode Island: $1,498 per visit.

20. Morris & Sons, Chicago: $1,507 per visit.

19. Kleinfeld Bridal, New York City: $1,508 per visit.

18. Bottega Veneta, Manhasset: $1,562 per visit.

17. Wilkes Bashford, San Francisco: $1,564 per visit.

16. Dolce & Gabbana, Beverly Hills: $1,595 per visit

15. Marissa Collections, Naples, Florida: $1,608 per visit.

14. Chloe, New York City: $1,673 per visit.

13. Ascot Chang, New York City: $1,752 per visit.

12. Lanvin, New York City: $1,787 per visit.

11. Tom Ford, New York City: $1,797 per visit.

10. Alexander McQueen, New York City: $1,847 per visit.

9. Savannah, Santa Monica: $1,970 per visit.

8. Blake, Chicago: $2,008 per visit.

7. Brunello Cucinelli, New York City: $2,032 per visit.

6. Chanel, New York City: $2,155 per visit

5. Maxfield, The Avenues District in West Hollywood: $2,258 per visit.

4. Akris, New York City: $2,649 per visit.

3. Loro Piana, Boston: $2,818 per visit.

2. Georgio Armani, New York City: $2,881 per visit.

1. Oscar de la Renta, New York City: And the most expensive store in American scores an whopping average of $3,217 per shopper per shopping trip.

· All Whale Week coverage [Racked]