Welcome to Whale Week, A Celebration of Luxury Shopping

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This week, in certain gilded corners of the world, some lucky people are going to be opening some gigantic freaking checks. It's bonus season in the finance business, which means it's also a kind of post-Christmas Christmas for any industry that relies on big money—luxury retail very much included.

To celebrate, we'll be 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, which are generally somewhat less than posh.) Borrowing a term 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. We'll map the country's most expensive stores, explore the priciest spa treatments, and interview the most connected personal shoppers.

We've found that in the Bay Area, retail high rollers are a unique and varied bunch. In many circles, flashiness is frowned upon, though making gobs of money is very much respected. Our whale landscape is a tad contradicory and unique to the Bay Area. So please jump into a metaphorical pile of money with us as we kick off Racked's first-ever Whale Week. And feel free to check out similar whale-focused coverage on our sibling sites, Curbed and Eater.
· All Whale Week coverage [Racked]