Selfridges is to be the first department store in the world to install a permanent cinema. It will open to the public at the end of November at its London site on Oxford Street.
The three-screen facility will be fitted with the latest state-of-the-art sound and vision technology and will offer cinemagoers food and drink along with a membership loyalty programme.
Operating all year round – and after the store’s trading hours – the venue will screen current releases, a mixture of blockbusters and independent films. It will have an entrance within the store as well as direct access from the street. The largest of the three screening rooms will have 80 seats.
The move is the latest by the store to provide customers with experiences beyond shopping. In 2017 it offered potato peeling workshops to help relieve stress as part of an installation celebrating the home while more recently it hosted a pop-up theatre celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
Simon Forster, Selfridges’ managing director, said: “For us this is a very exciting, yet natural extension to what Selfridges does, which is to provide customers with an extraordinary experience all year round.”
The project is the result of a partnership with the independent boutique cinema the Olympic Studios, which has outlets in Barnes and Battersea in London.
The outside entrance is on Duke Street, which has been the focus of a £300m investment and masterplan based on the never-realised ambition of its US founder Harry Gordon Selfridge to create a unified block within the Oxford Street, Orchard Street, Wigmore Street and Duke Street quadrant. Completed last year, it includes the world’s largest “handbag hall”.
