Behold—Markandeya!—This is the realm of art,  It is the atrium of Heaven," reads the inscription on the window of the Robyn Buntin of Honolulu shop, the premier Asian antiques gallery on Oahu. It's my first day in Hawaii, and unlike those travelers who shed their clothes and jump into the water the minute they're off the plane, I'm here to hit the shops, not the surf. Though the sun is beating down deliciously, I make a beeline to Buntin's world-class store. "I don't mean to brag," he says, smiling, "but we have museum-quality works here—it's a museum where you can touch."

In truth, Honolulu itself strikes me a bit like a museum where you can touch—a combination of verdant botanical garden, high-end designer exhibition, and riotous kitsch display.

I am basing these observations on my walk the previous night on Waikiki's main drag, Kalakaua Avenue (who needs to sleep after a 15-hour flight?), during which I noticed that Fendi is just off Don Ho Street, Cartier is within shouting distance of a Sunglass Hut, and Prada resides next to 88 Tees. This joyful jumble of high and low, pricey and cheap, bespeaks a democratic island spirit as uniquely Hawaiian as plumeria leis and hula-girl lamps.

Buntin doesn't handle hula lamps. His shop is a dazzling place—even if it is adjacent to Paradise Optical. After a mere 24 hours, I've learned that Honolulu's nondescript strip malls and office buildings can in fact contain sophisticated shops. Buntin's boutique offers 14th-century armored statues ($250,000) and a collection of tiny ivory and fruitwood netsuke (Japanese miniatures, originally used as obi toggles). "The best netsuke combine beautiful form and functionality, like a Rolex watch," says the Hawaiian shirt-clad proprietor, who came here 35 years ago after studying art in Berkeley. Buntin gazes fondly at a 19th-century miniature Noh mask, and then leads me to a 1922 Japanese oil portrait of a woman in a checked Art Deco kimono that has fallen artfully, if saucily, open. "This is my favorite!" he says. "She's called a moga—a modern girl!" I love this modern girl, but she doesn't come cheap—Buntin has tagged her at $26,000.

I leave her in Buntin's hands and head for the mall. Oahu's largest, the 200-plus-store Ala Moana Center, has virtually every upscale brand—Chanel, Burberry, Valentino, Versace—but, paradoxically, this gets me a bit down; must everything, even if it's gorgeous, be the same the world over? Then I step off the escalator on Ala Moana's third floor and realize that this is the only mall I've ever been to that offers open-air vistas of the pale green Pacific. . .