A two month delay in the opening of the deluxe new shopping mall JK Iguatemi, the result of its having failed to comply with traffic-calming measures, hasn’t dampened any of its opulence.

With its slick, high-shine floors, wood-clad elevators and huge windows that – unusually for a shopping centre – let the light pour in, JK is just what São Paulo’s chic elite will have been expecting from this newest of its many malls, which shares a name, and its ownership, with the city’s longest-standing luxury mall, Iguatemi.

Besides some of the city’s top restaurants (Varanda, Tre Bicchieri) and predictable synonyms for luxury like Chanel and Bulgari, look out for real coups like the first Brazilian branches of Sephora and of Topshop and its brother brand, Topman.

A miniature, albeit still spacious version of the one-time luxury department store Daslu is in eyeshot of the store’s former incarnation in an imposing mock neoclassical building next door.