A high-end sex shop has joined the boutique-lined streets of Manhattan’s SoHo.

Kiki de Montparnasse at 79 Greene St., which opened three weeks ago, is the latest entry in this growing retail category, which combines high-priced lingerie with the high-priced accoutrements of the luxury sexual encounter. And Kiki has gone one step further with a gallery devoted to showing and selling erotic art. The chic are taking notice. Lenny Kravitz reportedly stopped by on his birthday, and Vogue’s market editor, Meredith Melling Burke, said she was particularly impressed with the three light settings in the dressing room: “before,” “during,” and “after.”

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the market responded to American sexual preferences: A 2004 ABC News survey found that 42% of 1,501 adult Americans polled consider themselves “sexually adventurous,” and 30% of the rest would like to be more adventurous. And why not the respond with the language and approach used to sell couture and diamonds?

“Kiki de Montparnasse was conceived as a brand to instill customers with a sense of beauty and freedom, empowering them to explore their own sensuality,” the co-founder of the store, Andrew Pollard, said in a statement.

Products at the store include the “big bow panty” for $195, leather condom holders for $125, and a hand-sculpted Obsidian glass obelisk for $1,750.

So shopping for sex toys is no longer a slumming experience. Kiki de Montparnasse describes its retail environment as “Madame de Pompadour meets Monica Vitti” and its design, by the Los Angeles based studio Commune, mimics that of luxury brand clothing stores, with lacquer cabinets, hand-carved ebony tables, and metal hoop chandeliers.

The trend has exploded all over town, with even the department store Henri Bendel selling hand-held vibrating massagers. Other boutiques offering expensive sexual merchandise are La Petite Coquette in Greenwich Village; Myla on the Upper East Side, and Catriona MacKechnie in the Meatpacking District.

One company with a lot of influence on the trend is the San Francisco-based sex toy maker Jimmyjane, which began selling in January 2005. Its sales the first quarter of this year exceeded all of last year’s sales. “Jimmyjane is the intersection of design sophistication and kink,” the company’s founder, Ethan Imboden, a former engineer and product designer for brands such as Nike and Herman Miller, said.

La Petite Coquette began selling Jimmyjane products a year ago. “They’re very beautiful, they look like sculptures, and they’ve been a big hit,” the store’s owner, Rebecca Apsan, said.

Babeland, which has a tighter focus on sex toys and adult films, has outposts in SoHo and the Lower East Side, where it stays open until 11 p.m., not to accommodate the seedy set but rather the fashionable set frequenting the neighborhood’s restaurants.

A note of caution, though. Money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness. “Sometimes basic toys are the best,” the marketing coordinator for Babeland New York, Carolyn Riccardi, said.