Photo courtesy of de Young Museum

Wondering what to pack for your travels this summer?

Don’t sweat it — you’ll never be able to compete with the wonderful garments (some gorgeous, some outlandish) now on display at museums around the world, anyway.

A rash of single-designer shows are being staged, offering enticing exhibits on everyone from fierce originals (St. Laurent, McQueen) to avant garde visionaries (Gaultier, Yamamoto) to consummate traditionalists (Balenciaga, Gres). So, go look, and then look some more — but don’t touch.

Balenciaga and Spain, de Young Museum, San Francisco. Through July 4.

From the black lace of a mantilla to the red of a matador’s cape, this imaginative exhibit examines how Spanish culture and history influenced the sumptuous gowns of Cristobal Balenciaga. Besides religion and bullfighting, the show also looks at Spanish dance, art, court life and peasantry.

Yohji Yamamoto, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Through July 10

Incorporating the Japanese designer’s deconstructed creations into site specific installations throughout the museum, this exhibit is as resolutely architectural, as modest and arrogant — to use Yamamoto’s phrase — as the work itself. In a nod to the premium that the designer placed on fabric, mannequins are placed so that museumgoers can walk around and between them, to get up close to the Kyoto textiles.

Saint Laurent rive gauche, Fondation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent, Paris. Through July 17.

Displayed in a recreation of YSL’s first Paris boutique, the 70 ensembles presented here come from the designer’s pret a porter label, which he created in 1966, five years after founding his haute couture house. The line sportily borrowed from menswear, freeing up women’s clothes in a way that hadn’t been done much before.

Madame Gres: Couture at Work, Musee Bourdelle, Paris. Through July 24.

The first retrospective in Paris for the designer known for her sculptural approach to fashion, the show offers 80 gowns on loan from the Galliera Museum and private collectors. In her best work, Madame Gres, born Germaine Krebs, brought simplicity to new heights with her elegant, draped gowns in muted shades of ivory or gray.

photo courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Through Aug. 7.

Although the Alexander McQueen label supplied the gown for the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the house built its reputation on edgier, statement designs invoking political and historical themes. The exhibition highlights six McQueen collections; accessories by the late British designer’s partners, including milliner Philip Treacy and jewelry designer Shaun Leane; and extensive video. A highlight is the famous hologram of model Kate Moss from a 2006 runway show.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal. Through Oct. 2.

The lengthy title of this career retrospective seems apt, given the frenetic quality of this French designer’s work. The show is organized under tantalizing categories, such as The Boudoir, Punk Cancan and Urban Jungle, and offers up a trove of video, as well as fashion and art photography by the likes of Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, Cindy Sherman and Herb Ritts.

Photo by Irv Green

I lived in San Francisco for 25 years, but it wasn’t until a recent return visit that I began to learn its secrets. Oh, I’d walked the Golden Gate, noodled around Chinatown, shopped in Union Square. But I’d never heard the gossip.

Then I took these special tours, each led by locals who showed me the hidden places and told me the scandalous stories. Now, after having been gone for more than a decade, I feel like I really belong.

Financial District:

We’re standing in a very small park atop a very tall building in the Financial District. Across from us is the Hallidie Building, built in 1917 and named in honor of Andrew Hallidie, the inventor of the San Francisco cable car. Our guide, Rick Evans, owner of San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour, tells us it was the first building to feature “glass curtain walls.”

A few minutes later we’re looking at the Shell Building, the last major structure built before the Depression and war halted construction activity. Across the street, reflected in the building’s wall, is the Crown-Zellerbach building, built in 1959. In those thirty years styles changed from ornamental to functional as the United States moved into its role as a world power.

We walk a few blocks more and find ourselves on another rooftop garden, and it’s no wonder the tours are as popular with locals as out-of-towners. “Some of these places are so hidden that they’re unknown even to people who work within a few blocks of them,” Rick says.

Photo courtesy of Hobnob Tours

Nob Hill: Upward Mobility

My husband and I ride the cable car to the Fairmont Hotel, the grand dame of hotels atop Nob Hill.

It seems apropos since the cable car is what allowed the 19th century’s most privileged folks to live in rarefied hilltop air, far above the “low-life” who frequented the docks. The hill was simply too steep for horse-drawn carriages.

Valerie Huff, owner of Hobnob Tours, leads us first through the public rooms of the grand hotel, then on a two-hour, flat-ground tour of the neighborhood.

Before the earthquake of 1906, the area was filled with grand mansions and luxury hotels, most of which were destroyed by post-quake fires. Today the area again is filled with homes of the affluent.

En route I learn that two feuding barons each hired bodyguards to protect one from the other, and that a rich widow disinherited her son when he opposed her marriage to an unsuitable man. Soon I know why Nob Hill is sometimes called “snob hill,” and I’m reveling in my insider status.

Photo by Irv Green

Japantown: Beyond Hello Kitty

We’ve chosen to stay at the Kabuki Hotel, a member of San Francisco’s Joie de Vivre Hospitality Group. Why? Because the JDV properties offer guests complimentary customized tours through their Golden Gate Greeter Program.

After much consideration, we ask to be matched with a volunteer who will give us an insider’s view of Japantown. Our guide, Tomo, appears on the appointed day, and spends two hours leading us through the streets surrounding the large Peace Pagoda that centers the neighborhood.

Instead of just wandering past stores filled with Little Kitty merchandise and restaurants serving tempura — which is what we would have done on our own — we get in-depth explanations of Japanese customs, from the tea ceremony to ikebana (flower arranging).

We agree that next time we’ll ask a Golden Gate Greeter to show us the Haight-Ashbury, where we used to live, or maybe the Mission District, which has changed so much in recent years. But for now, our minds are full and our feet are sore.