Selfridges is skilled at making things that are not hideous (women) look hideous (women dressed as Bungle from Rainbow or a tree, after shopping at Selfridges). So I was not surprised to discover that it has summoned a ‘pop-up’ restaurant to its roof. It is called Vintage Salt and it is based on a Cornish fishing village. Not a real one, such as Newlyn, but a fake one, such as Padstow, which is based on Selfridges anyway. Selfridges shoppers do not want reality but a half-remembered contortion of something they read in Vogue while having their hair dyed banana yellow in St John’s Wood High Street in the company of a chihuahua smarter than they are.
The portal is an express lift in Fragrance. This is the point, I suppose, at which Vintage Salt and Newlyn part company, if ever they met — when I pass a group of women in ink-black burkas and Dior handbags spraying perfume over themselves, because then they will feel different. This is, essentially, the lie of advertising, which Selfridges screams better than anyone; if you pay to smell like Toilet Duck you will be worthy of love. That they have exactly the same Dior handbag is, I suppose, a nod to the philosophy of the burka. I do not hate all department stores — I like Debenhams — but Selfridges is quite close to a cult of idiocy. Its mantra used to be I Shop Therefore I Am. As manifestos go, that is sub-Boko Haram.
The lift contains a woman dressed in a striped Breton top. Brittany is not in Cornwall. Upstairs, a long and tatty corridor, lined with small boulders and piles of rope. It is slightly Hornblower-esque. At the end, an anxious reception desk staffed by women in cream dresses.
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