Selfridges

Selfridges was founded in 1909 in London by the American merchant Harry Gordon Selfridge, who had previously been a partner at Marshall Field's in Chicago before relocating to London and opening the Selfridges flagship on Oxford Street with the explicit thesis that 'shopping should be entertainment.' The Edwardian-Baroque flagship building (designed by Daniel Burnham and Frank Atkinson, opened March 1909) became one of the defining department-store buildings of the early 20th century. The Selfridges vocabulary settled around several distinguishing things: the Oxford Street flagship's iconic ground-floor cosmetics-and-accessories hall, the seven-floor men's-and-women's fashion floors (the Designer Studio, the Men's Designer Studio, the Wonder Room jewellery floor), the Selfridges Project programme of artist-led store installations, and a department-store buyer list that ranges from every major luxury brand through to streetwear (Stüssy, A Bathing Ape, Supreme via the Dover Street Market relationship, BAPE, Carhartt WIP) and emerging contemporary designers. The Selfridges Christmas window programme has been a defining London cultural event since the 1950s. Selfridges Group is owned by Central Group (the Thai-Austrian retail conglomerate controlled by the Chirathivat family) and Signa Holding (the Austrian property group), which jointly acquired Selfridges Group from the Weston family in 2021 for approximately £4B. The retailer operates four flagship stores — London (Oxford Street, the original 1909 flagship), Birmingham (Bullring), Manchester Exchange Square, Manchester Trafford — plus the Selfridges e-commerce platform. The Oxford Street flagship, which spans approximately 540,000 square feet, is the second-largest department store in the United Kingdom after Harrods.