No Noise at Selfridges

This afternoon I headed down to the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, to Selfridges, to top myself up with some Nespresso capsules and take a peek at the new Silence Room. When Selfridges first opened its doors in 1909, Harry Gordon Selfridge created a Silence Room where busy shoppers could “retire from the whirl of bargains and the build up of energy”. A little more than a century later and the Silence Room is back, decked out in soft felt and Farrow & Ball paint. I wonder why it ever left the department store.

Designed by Alex Cochrane Architects, this inner-sanctum in the lower ground floor of the store is quiet and relaxing. Visitors are asked to take their shoes off and leave phones and 21st century distractions behind. At first I found it hard to relax, I could still hear the clinking of diner’s cutlery in the adjacent room. But although not entirely silent, it was a fantastic retreat from Oxford Street, which can often leave you tearing out your hair on Saturday afternoon.

Photography is by Andrew Meredith.

Also as part of the No Noise Campaign were a series of ‘Headspace Pods’, dotted around the emporium, providing simple and easy-to-follow guided meditations that take no more than 10 minutes.

In addition, Selfridges have provided a ‘Quiet Shop’, a homage to minimalist fashion with a carefully curated edit from the spring/summer 2013 catwalks- Acne and COS a plenty. Some of the world’s most recognisable brands, including Marmite, Levi’s, Clinique and Selfridges themselves, have removed their logos in a collection of de-branded products.