By Cerys So are you one of those people who actually enjoys the tacky, sleazy aspects of fetish shopping? The piles of cheap cardboard boxes and the changing rooms where there’s no room to take your coat off, let along struggle into a latex catsuit? Or do you prefer to indulge your whims in a boutique that feels like the salon of an eighteenth century courtesan? Personally, I have always had a preference for a place that makes me feel like a swan in foam - rather than a pig in muck, but maybe that’s just me.

Femme Boudoir describes itself as a shop run by women for women. And certainly when we visited, it was staffed by women who seemed excited and knowledgeable about the clothes they were selling. As well as merely looking good in them. It was perhaps unsurprising then that most of the clientele seemed to be men. I had dragged a friend along to check it out, on the pretext of finding a present for his partner. However, inevitably, I was seduced by the beautiful kink of their clothes and ended up gorging myself.

The shop is over two floors, with a selection of elegant lingerie and Vollers corsets upstairs, and your more kinky toys, latex and pvc in the basement. It’s spacious and beautifully decorated, all velvet and deep colours and dark wooden chests of drawers. As a woman, it’s the kind of place which makes you feel good about yourself – which is always a dangerous preamble to spending lots of money. And there is enough room to swing a cat in the changing room (in the original sense of a cat-o-nine tails).

The lingerie is mostly very pretty and minimalist and slanted towards a lap-dancer look: lots of voile and sequins and fluffy bits. The corsets are gorgeous – brocades and satins – and mainly have to be ordered to your size and style. All of it is beautifully finished. There are also laced boots and dinky mules to complete the picture. Downstairs, the latex is from the designer end of the market, including Inner Sanctum and Pigalle. It’s only the packaging of some of the toys which – inevitably – lets down the tone! If you didn’t know better, you’d feel you were visiting a posh tailor’s shop.

I was particularly impressed by the help and advice from the staff. Many of us need a bit of encouragement, and this would be a good place to come if you hadn’t bought a corset or a rubber frock before, but really wanted something luscious. I now know exactly the size of corset I should be wearing and which latex styling will make my tits look the most pert!

Although Femme Boudoir is not cheap, it was less expensive that I would have expected given the evident quality of most of its clothes – and certainly cheaper that its most obvious rival, Agent Provocateur. But even if your credit card does end up feeling weak afterwards, at least you know you’ll love wearing it all. This is for the glamour princess in you.

Femme Boudoir, 17B Riding House Street, London W1W 7DT; tel: 020 7637 5794. It also has an online catalogue and website at www.femmeboudoir.com