Fresh Glitz Amid Britain's Gloom

New $2.8 Billion Mall in W. London Features Luxury Retailers

LONDON, Oct. 30 -- Just in front of the crowd jammed into Tiffany, next to the champagne bar packed with shoppers sipping $15 fizzy peach Bellinis, not far from the florist selling $175 orchids, Bea Huguet rested for a moment on a brand-new leather couch.

"What recession? There's no crisis here," said Huguet, 25, who, like tens of thousands of others, sneaked away on a sunny Thursday morning to soak in all the cosmopolitan consumption at the opening of Europe's largest city mall.

Westfield London, a sparkling $2.8 billion project that dominates the otherwise gritty Shepherd's Bush section of west London, opened Thursday amid Britain's darkest economic conditions in nearly a generation.

As the global financial crisis bites hard, thousands of British jobs are disappearing, housing foreclosures are hitting record levels and Prime Minister Gordon Brown is warning of a deep and painful recession.

Retail analysts wonder whether a breathtaking new mall, featuring 265 shops, 50 restaurants, 96 escalators and 1.6 million square feet of floor space, will flourish in those conditions.

But Westfield defied such talk Thursday with a ribbon-cutting by London Mayor Boris Johnson, who greeted thousands of shoppers and VIP guests with a bellowed "My fellow consumers!"

Johnson said a reporter covering the opening, which featured a fashion show and an ebullient performance by London-born international pop diva Leona Lewis, asked him if "these dark days of austerity" were "the right time" to open such a temple to the gods of retail.

"My fellow consumers, in a hotly contested field, it was one of the silliest questions I've ever been asked," Johnson said, squinting as sunshine poured through the panels of the atrium's glass ceiling, four levels of shops above him.

Johnson rattled off the reasons: The mall will employ 7,000 people, and its Australian developers have spent $277 million on improvements to the London subway system, including three new stations serving the mall.

"This will bring jobs and growth and customers to this part of London," Johnson said, adding that he believed there were "people sitting on piles of money out there" just waiting to spend it.

After urging people to "go shop," the mayor signed off with a joke about his famously ill-fitting suits, saying, "I am going to join you." He shuffled off across the white marble floor, past the orchestra playing a cymbal-crashing flourish.

At Tiffany, one of many luxury retailers that include Prada, Chanel and Gucci, Stephen and Susan Reid plunked down $250 for a silver necklace -- a Christmas present for their 19-year-old daughter.