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When you think about the things that are lacking at Selfridges, the high-end department store in London's West End, luxury items do not immediately come to mind. Restrooms, yes. That's a store that could use more restrooms, especially when it's filled with so many ladies who lunch.

But luxury items? It's already the place where discriminating women (and fashion-conscious men) go when they need a pricey little pick-me-up.

Now, however, Selfridges has decided to gild its lily and put a capital B on the bling: It has opened the Wonder Room, a vast temple for the worship - and purchase, of course - of luxury goods.

If you're walking on Oxford Street and feel a yen for a £53,000 ($113,000) jewelled cellphone, then yen no more. And if you happen to leave your glittering Nokia Vertu on the bus, there are several phones to replace it, and a specially designed, Selfridges-yellow Hermès Birkin bag to pop them in. (There are two yellow Birkins on sale, but you have to enter a draw to win the right to buy one.)

The glittering baubles are only one part of the picture. In keeping with the current trend for high-end retailers going beyond a mere shopping experience, Selfridges' creative director, Alannah Weston, has presided over a space where artists, architects and rising designers display their wares next to the luxurious necklaces and watches.

"It's about an unusual experience, a wondrous experience, not just buying luxury brands," Weston says.

She's standing next to a kinetic sculpture by the young English artist Conrad Shawcross.

It sits in the store's window drawing the eye of passersby. On her other side, sits a series of seven glass cabinets designed by the sought-after architect Zaha Hadid, each based around a theme of one of her buildings.

The 19,000-square-foot space has been transformed, at a cost of £10-million ($21-million), from a dark warren of men's suits, belts and ties to a light-drenched space with new tall windows that give shoppers a better opportunity to peer at the £770,000 ($1.65-million) emerald necklace at H. Stern (it took 12 years to find perfectly matching gems for the piece).

"My father is a big fan of natural light," says Weston, speaking of Galen Weston, who controls the family's retail empire, including Selfridges, its sister stores in Britain and the Holt Renfrew shops in Canada. "He doesn't believe in boxing people in, because it makes them disoriented and uncomfortable."

The luxury market is enjoying a boom in London at the moment; if ever there was a time to flog a £275 ($600) limited edition Dolce & Gabbana riding crop, it's now. (That item comes from the Wonder Room's small collection of erotica.) Bonuses in London's financial district rose by 30 per cent this year to £14-billion ($30-billion), according to a survey last month from the Guardian newspaper and Britain's National Office of Statistics. Those financial hot shots face stiff shopping competition from Russian, Indian and Chinese expatriates and tourists.

Brits may be living large right now - at Christmas, high-end London shops reported running out of designer handbags - but what happens to a venture such as the Wonder Room if the good times stop rolling?

"As long as you're good at what you do, you should be able to repel any downturn, or sustain your business in a downturn, whether you're working at the lower end of the market or you're working at the top end," Weston says. "You need to maintain the courage of your convictions and have a clear vision for your store."

That vision includes everything from fine jewellery to rare books. It's possible, at the Wonder Room, to buy a copy of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (an edition written under the pen name Victoria Lucas and stored, fittingly, under a bell jar) or a first edition of Mae West's autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It, for £600 ($1,300).

At the flashier end of the rainbow, you find a pair of superlatives: first, a compact computer, covered in sharkskin, diamonds and 18-karat white gold, that, according to the salesman, is "the most expensive laptop in the world." It costs £33,000 ($76,500) and is manufactured by a company called Ego Lifestyles. Then there's a wall featuring more shades than even Nicole Richie could use in the lifetime, which constitutes "the largest sunglasses department in the world," according to Weston.

It's a long way from the shop Gordon Selfridge opened in 1909, which featured a Silence Room bearing the warning: "Ladies will refrain from conversation" That department store is now a Grade 1 listed building, which means special care had to be taken in its refurbishment. Times have changed enough so that ladies, as well as gentlemen, can avail themselves of the "wine jukebox" in the adjoining Wonder Bar. That is, you purchase a card and use it to buy wine by the glass from a row of bottles. (There was a Château Pétrus that cost £160 ($340) a glass, but it's sold out.)

While the appetite for luxury items appears unquenchable - much like the thirst for a nice drop of Pétrus after a hard day in the money mines - there seems to be an equally strong spirit in the other direction, and you don't have to be Karl Marx to sense it. Even Hollywood stars are pleading for the world to reduce, reuse, recycle, and to adopt a more decorous approach to consumption.

But according to Weston, this ethic and the Wonder Room can exist at the same time: "A lot of products we're selling are timeless, and something people would keep for generations. So I don't see it as part of what some people call throwaway consumption."

Really, why would you toss out a canary-yellow Birkin? If you're lucky enough to win the draw, that is, and you've got enough dosh to buy one in the first place.