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‘You’ve got everything from Topman to Dior here. The rise of the high street has been very important,’ he says. Brand new LA denim brands are arriving and Dockers is getting its own designated area. You can now also buy a bike at the Cycle Surgery. The mood changes throughout the floor, thanks in part to the music. While you browse the younger, more skater-boy ranges, the music is upbeat, loud and bass-heavy. The older, more expensive areas offer jazz or a bit of Bowie or Kate Bush. Currently a work-in-progress, the last refurbished area will be unveiled on December 8.

Just as intriguing is what’s behind the grand curtain of the great Selfridges show. The enormous amount of retail space is literally only half the story. The ‘back-of-house’, given over to offices, storage, the d staff canteen and the basements, is almost as big. David Jarvis, divisional manager for operations support, takes me on a fascinating tour of his realm. Feature continues

We start by heading down into the basements. Myths abound about this subterranean world and, sadly, most of them are just that. There is no abandoned tube station, though Selfridge did lobby to get an underground tunnel built from Bond Street station up into the store – and have the station renamed ‘Selfridges’. Neither was there a river running through it – though there was an artesian well that served the building for years.

There are two levels of basement beneath the lower-ground shop floor: the ‘sub’ and the ‘sub-sub’, descending 60 metres below street level. These are split into two more areas: the dry sub and sub-sub, and their ‘wet’ equivalents. The wet area, more dank than watery, is beneath the original building, while the dry is under the rear building, known as the SWOD (after the four streets – Somerset, Wigmore, Orchard and Duke – that once enclosed it).

During WWII, the SWOD’s basement was used by 50 soldiers from the US Army Signal Corps; there were even visits from Eisenhower and Churchill. The building had one of the only secure telex lines, was safe from bombing, and was close to the US Embassy on Grosvenor Square. According to Jarvis, a tunnel was built from Selfridges to the embassy so that personnel could move between the two in safety. Interrogation cells for prisoners were hewn from the uneven space available.

In complete contrast is the roof, now an Escher-esque maze of parapets, air-con units and shallow staircases, which would make a brilliant location for a Bond chase scene. It’s hard to imagine this was a tea garden, with lilyponds and cherry trees, as well as a rifle range, mini-golf course and ice rink at various other times. Now there is nothing left of the garden but the view. And from the southern edge of the roof you get a unique view of a miniaturised Oxford Street as you peer through the carved stone balusters. If you had stood up here in the mid-1940s, you might have spotted a forlorn figure across the road: Gordon Selfridge, who relinquished his presidency unwillingly and found himself impoverished, but continued to visit Oxford Street, to stare up at the retail palace that would survive without him. Although his would seem to be a sad end, the story has come full circle with the theWeston family’s involvement.

As the Westons’ loyal lieutenant and Selfridges’ chief executive Paul Kelly says: ‘The Selfridges heritage is incredibly important. You see this in the building: we’re always looking to make the most of the classical architecture, the art deco details, the high ceilings, the atriums. The other aspect of the heritage is what we think of as the DNA of the brand, which is about theatre and bringing the store to life. We need to give customers a reason to come to Selfridges and our dream today – just as it was for Gordon Selfridge back in 1909 – is that people will say “Let’s go to Selfridges, there’s bound to be something amazing happening.” ’