Well, not quite. It's cold and gray, as usual, but Spring has made an appearance on London's streets, specifically, in a few square meters on Oxford Street. Selfridge & Co. has kindly reminded us that Spring, bless her heart, is creeping 'round the corner.
Always worth a second glance, the Selfridge windows today rebuff the winter chill with scenes straight out of an English garden, one run amuck with leaf-clad men and petal-adorned women. Lucious lads hawk perky plastic fruit, their unseeing eyes covered with sunglasses--hope springs eternal in the mannequin classes.
Nearby, Marble Arch suffers no such pretensions. It soldiers on, not a petal lifting its mood, in the midst of all that frivolity London occasionally tolerates.
While Harrods gets all the attention, Selfridge and Co.'s flagship store on Oxford Street near Marble Arch is every bit as entertaining. Their food court is more accessible, and possibly better provisioned; their fashions more imaginatively displayed. Homewares, while never a top tourist attraction, are better lit, and better selected, than the fuddy duddy Spode and ubiquitous Ralph Lauren Harrods stocks. With its sassy, in-your-face attitude, Selfridge is my favorite wish-I-could-afford department store in London. Because when it comes to retail, it's all window dressing.