Houston's Galleria will get four new stores this year, including a Prada store and an Omega watch boutique.

The Prada store will open in October in 5,100 feet of space space now occupied by Emporio Armani. The Emporio Armani store will be consolidated with Giorgio Armani, according to a report in the Chronicle..

Two of the new stores are slated to open in May. They are Miu Miu, a division of Prada, will move into the old Bailey Banks & Biddle space. Omega will open, also in May, in space previously ocupied by Movado.

These will be the only Houston locations for these three retailers.

The fourth new store, Free People, also is scheduled to open in May in space previously occupied by United Colors of Benetton.

Forbes magazine poured over statistics and visited cities all over America and came to a conclusion that Houstonians already know: Houston ranks first in the nation for shopping.

That Houston, the nation's fourth largest city, has nearly 17,000 retail locations and 54 shopping centers, is part of the story, as is the fact that it is home to wealth (and lots of people who love to shop). But there is more to it than that.

"Like their football and BBQ," the magazine says, "Texans take their shopping seriously." It notes that nearly a quarter of the retail space in the country's largest cities are in Texas.

"Move over New York. When it comes to shopping, everything's bigger in Texas," the Forbes' story begins.

In addition to Houston, Dallas and San Antonio also made the top 10. Click here to see the magazine's list.

The story quotes stylist Kate Barash, a Houston native now living in Los Angeles: “Houston might be a big city, and sure you can spend days buying up the shopping malls, but for me the best thing has always been the boutiques that are somehow both 100% Southern and completely chic.”

Barash, who describes her own fashion sense as “date night feisty,” shares her two favorite Houston stops for shopping: 310 Rosemont (1965 W. Gray Ave.), where she stocks up jeans from trendy 1921 and Seven For All Mankind and also scores pieces from Milly and James Perse; and Lot 8 (6127 Kirby Drive), where she finds “the best L.A. designers without the Los Angeles inflated prices.”

The story adds: "If one-stop shopping is more your style than hunting for boutiques in humid Houston, take a drive to Texas’s biggest mall, the Galleria, which boasts 2.5 million square feet of retail pleasure."

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