For chocolate, Selfridges is a university. It has its own arena, a kind of sumo wrestlers ring where heavyweight gastro kings like Alain Ducasse and Pierre Marcolini can duke it out to have the prettiest, most luxuriest, most expensive box of chocolates, a title probably held by Patrick Roger in Paris where the BR5 assortment runs to 65 euros, C2 assortment 160 euros.
Chocolate is no longer in the food hall but downstairs. Or down the escalator, past the Nespresso emporium, a solera of a wine selection (21 Riojas, six Montrachets, very good Rhone selection, but burgundy can also mean bikini and Bordeaux a hair clip).
And you come to an area the size of an oligarch’s garden. Yes there is Cadbury, yes there is Lindt – Selfridges always does the bottom and top lines, it is the middle ground they avoid. There is a chemist style array for Marcolini, two counters for Ducasse and a whole shelving for Majani and and, and…it is a pornography of chocolate (and all available online) from Peru, from Ecuador, from Vietnam, unimaginable journeys to arrive at this airport lounge of brand extension.
Chocolate fits this universe where fountain pens are £1100, an Annie Liebovitz photography sumo sized picture book is £7,500. The store is art. The retail installation puts the Tate gallery in the shade. New window displays are announced like movies. The prices? Well you ask?
400 Oxford Street, W1
