Is there a designer worth his resale number who hasn’t mined the souks of Marrakech? If you have spent any time getting happily lost in the markets’ labyrinth of alleys, you know the answer is no.

Professionals from all over the map can be regularly observed in the solemn business of appraising child-size wrought iron lanterns, finely chased brass trays with piecrust edges and carved octagonal stools inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Wasn’t that Campion A. Platt, the New York architect and designer, fingering a kilim and threatening to walk if the merchant didn’t slash his price? It was, and he got his price: $100.

Platt experienced the often deliriously exhilarating shopping phenomenon that is Marrakech on a recent first visit to the city, accompanied by his fiancée, Tatiana Gau. (They have since married.) The couple’s trip combined probing retail therapy with a very social stay with Gau’s godfather, Frederick Vreeland, fashion empress Diana’s son and a former American ambassador to Morocco. For two people intent on getting the inside track, they certainly had the right host.

“To me, Marrakech is like a Moroccan version of Milan, with its long streets and mysterious, inward-looking riads—houses whose façades give no indication of the beautiful courtyards on the other side,” says Platt. “Many of the places I went to turned out to be in riads—a bonus for the shopper who’s also a student of architecture.”

Platt’s Marrakech consumer education got off to a sophisticated start at TM Design, which specializes in decorative objects and light fixtures using maillechort, a copper, zinc and nickel alloy. Sheets of the metal, minutely decorated with a pinpoint awl, partially wrap boxes, beech lamps and canisters.

“While a lot of the local metalwork is encrusted with ornament, TM’s is subtler, more refined,” says Platt. “I commissioned chargers with a shiny rim, and it’s the shininess that makes them modern.”

Platt also left an order with the reluctant Marrakech embroidery queen Brigitte Perkins, for towels with filigree needlework. Famously shy, Perkins has an appointment-only showroom in a riad she shares with a blacksmith. An atmosphere of genial chaos only adds to the fun of rifling through the tablecloths, pareus and bedcoverings in bands of tightly woven silk and gauzy linen. Platt praises Perkins’s “tertiary details” but admits that snagging a rendezvous with her can be defeating. Luckily, the collection is also sold at the boutique in the Amanjena hotel outside of town.

Platt’s understanding of vernacular Moroccan design took a sharp turn at Ministero del Gusto, the showroom and gallery of Alessandra Lippini and Fabrizio Bizzarri. Their surrealistic palazzo of a riad is influenced by the Malian architecture of Dogon sand dwellings, with Gaudí-esque windows, mud-and-straw columns, and courtyard walls bristling with horizontally embedded eucalyptus sticks.

“I tried to find people who share my aesthetic, which is more contemporary and not as culturally specific as what you typically find in Marrakech,” says Platt. The owners repaid his search with a round white leather-topped table they designed, its base composed of aluminum letters; a pouf that might be mistaken for a giant wavelapped beach stone if it weren’t covered in a velvet with giraffe spots; and jagged bowls with a kind of prehistoric chic, as if a nursery of infant dinosaurs had just left the room. If Lippini and Bizzarri are suggesting Ministero as a model for the next generation of riads, they are wasting their breath on Gerard Santolini’s Dar Al Charij. He embraces every fragment of his house’s 900-year-history. “Gerard is for serious collectors of serious Islamic artifacts, from jewelry and trunks to scales and cooking vessels,” says Platt.

Meryanne Loum-Martin’s Ryad Tamsna is the riad as restaurant, tea salon, bookstore, art gallery, and fashion and home furnishings boutique. Tamsna’s mix is the envy of the medina: hand-painted shawls, Senegalese textiles and contemporary wrought iron beds. “Meryanne’s talent is for tempering the ethnic aspect of traditional designs so they have wider appeal,” says Platt. “She gets it.”

Frédérique and Norbert Birkemeyer’s shop appeals to diplomats’ wives who seek to avoid the full-on Moroccan look in favor of something worldlier. Darkoum, the Birkemeyers’ three-story emporium, sells its own line of handwoven fabrics, as well as Indian silver and furniture from the Ivory Coast.

Another species of shopper, the connoisseur with deep pockets, is drawn to Lucien Viola. His Galerie Tadghart is a showcase for Berber ceremonial veils, muskets and architectural salvage. “While to find these one-of-a-kind pieces Lucien drills way down into the culture, Mustapha Blaoui, of Tresor des Nomades, is about volume,” says Platt. “His is the best of the large stores, with multiples of everything—straw mats, monumental candelabra and small distressed-leather chests that make great night tables.”

Platt finds shopping in the exotic city both educational and rewarding. “For quality and diversity, the crafts in Marrakech are on par with those of Bali, where I’ve done a lot of work,” says the architect. “In Marrakech it’s all about crafting.”

- Christopher Petkanas