Want to buy any of these? Sorry, we're closed.

You're reading an upscale home decorating magazine and spot an ad for some fabulous fabric.

It's perfect for the living room chair. You want to get your hands on it right away. But then you read the fine print and -- guess what? You can't go out and buy it.

It's available ''to the trade only," which is designerspeak for a requirement that a designer or architect has to get it for you at the Boston Design Center, a privilege for which you pay a professional fee.

Welcome to the world of high-end home design in Boston, a time-honored, stratified, and curious system of buying products to decorate your home.

While the average Boston-area shopper is content to seek furniture, fabric, and other home furnishings from the likes of Crate & Barrel or Bernie & Phyl's, or from catalogs or websites, some people would never think of looking any farther than the exclusive home furnishings emporium that is the Boston Design Center.

Ensconced on the waterfront next to the Black Falcon Cruise Terminal, the design center boasts 87 wholesale showrooms offering deep-pocketed customers the highest of high-end customized floor coverings, fabric, wallpaper, lighting, kitchen and bath fixtures, and furniture -- provided they're chaperoned by their ''design professional." (The center was acquired last month by the parent company of Merchandise Mart Properties in Chicago, whose president is Chris Kennedy, son of Robert and Ethel.)

For design junkies -- and Boston is full of them -- it's a tantalizing place, teeming with sumptuous fabrics and trims, exquisitely upholstered and customized furniture, luxurious rugs that would satisfy a sultan. Here you can procure a ribbed oval copper tub at Ann Sacks for $36,750, a Ralph Lauren bed for $15,000, stone floorings at Geologica that re-create ''rare, exotic, extinct and technically limited material."

But in the last few years, there's been something of a revolution in the home decorating world. Design books, magazines, and TV shows are challenging the supremacy of the interior design world, assuring consumers they can have a professionally designed look for less -- and without the professional. High-profile designers are creating home furnishings for the mass marketplace, from Michael Graves, who designs kitchen utensils for Target, to Todd Oldham, who's done furniture for La-Z-Boy.

And at a time when design is catering to the masses, many are finding the exclusive nature of these high-end showrooms to be anachronistic, if not elitist. In trying to be exclusive, some feel, they risk excluding themselves right out of business.

''I think design centers are going out and will be a thing of the past soon. They'll become something like fossils," predicts celebrity designer Jonathan Adler, who made a conscious decision not to bring his new Jonathan Adler Furniture Collection to the design center; it's being sold at Circle Furniture stores.

''I find the notion of inaccessible design to be really lugubrious and a little depressing," he says. ''The idea that you can only get things through an interior designer is a really old-fashioned notion."

''Everything about it shouts, 'You are the novice and we are working with your decorator, who is peddling your look and your style -- you're not the pro in your own home,' " says Newton homeowner Robin Vernon, who bought a sofa and two chairs at the design center with the help of a friend, an interior designer -- and will not rush back. ''I think the whole concept is disgusting. I found it very intimidating, and not fun."

SEE MORE DESIGN CENTER PHOTOS To see a photo gallery of the Boston Design Center, visit www.boston.com/yourlife/home.

Vernon is one of a relatively small number of people in the Boston area who have ever crossed the threshold of the Boston Design Center, a grand and opulent edifice with architecture that manages to be both South Boston and upscale at the same time, with its sienna paneled walls, frosted glass windows, burnished steel accents, limestone floors, and imposing concierge desk, where you are not so much greeted as carded.

There are similar design centers in other large cities around the country, with showrooms carrying product lines familiar -- if not attainable -- to anyone who peruses such upscale magazines as Metropolitan Home or Architectural Digest.

Those who shop at such places represent 1 percent of Americans with incomes of at least a quarter of a million dollars a year, say design center executives. The typical client ''wants three things," Kennedy says. ''They want to have something unique. They want the execution to be technically perfect. And they want to have something of value. And they can't get that anywhere else because the designers they work with are experts. They'll make sure the chair skirt hits where it's supposed to. They know which $90-a-yard fabric is worth the $90-a-yard price."

For a long time, no has one rocked the design center boat. The showrooms like the system because they're not equipped or inclined to do cash-and-carry business and don't want the hassle of dealing with members of the public who don't speak the esoteric language of high-end design. The designers like it because ''it's one-stop shopping," says David Webster, president of Webster & Co., a family-owned, multi-product showroom. ''They don't want to run all around town to visit the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. It's a lot easier to shop for a house when you can come and get everything in one location." (Also, no doubt, because clients pay a high price for the goods, which can include a markup of up to 40 percent for the designer.)

But the status quo isn't necessarily working as well anymore, not with increased competition from retailers offering stylish merchandise with lower price tags, and with some showroom operators crying out for more foot traffic in the face of higher rents and other escalating costs. Chris Bates pulled his contemporary furniture showroom, Montage, out of the Boston Design Center three years ago and moved to the Back Bay ''because I knew there was more business outside the design center for me than inside."

Sharon Jorgensen, who operates the Sharon B. Jorgensen Antiques showroom, has thought about doing the same. ''There aren't a lot of people in here; have you walked down the halls?" she says. ''The building is designed so it's designer-friendly, but I don't know if there are enough designers to support this. I think the public would like more access . . . but what they are trying to do is protect the design community. Unfortunately for me."

By all accounts, design centers are looking hard at themselves and ''reconsidering our business model," says Annette Sharkey Beavers, president of Design Centers International, a trade association for major design centers. ''The competition is killing. The industry has changed . . . and the high-end consumer has also changed."

And changes are starting to happen in the design centers, albeit quietly. Some are starting to open the doors to the public, if only a crack. At the San Francisco Design Center, a few showrooms have started selling accessories directly to the public. At the Marketplace Design Center in Philadelphia, ''you can walk in off the street and go to at least 20 of the 50 showrooms," according to Beavers.

Here, the Boston Design Center has launched a membership program called Plush. For an annual fee of $275, it offers the public four hours of design consultation, followed by an hourly fee of $110 for unlimited access to the center for browsing, though not buying. (For that they are referred to the Designer on Call Program.) And twice a year, it has Red Tag Sales, where the public can purchase floor samples.

''We welcome the public," says Alexis Contant, vice president of marketing. ''We want to accommodate the client who didn't have the ability to engage the services of an interior designer."

Still, they're not exactly throwing open the doors. At the last Red Tag Sale, it cost $15 for admission and parking, and the majority of showrooms were closed.

''We certainly want to welcome the public more, but we are not a retailer and never want to be," says Bill Elinoff, a manufacturer's representative for several fabric lines, who says his business is better than ever.

''You can't just sell to the end user," says Webster. ''The minute you start doing that and designers find out about it, you've lost your client base. You don't bite the hand that feeds you."

Not that the design center seems to be in imminent danger of changing under its new management. ''I don't think we can expect a radical departure from what has been a very good history," Kennedy says. ''This is our client, and this has been our customer for years and years . . . and we will not abandon them in the speculative hopes that we can make it easier for [the rest]."

Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com.