A top store in Switzerland has apologized to Oprah Winfrey - one of the richest women in the world - for refusing to let her look at a bag because the shop assistant presumed she couldn't afford it.

The talk show host told Entertainment Tonight about the racist incident which took place while she was visiting Zurich for Tina Turner's wedding. 

She said: 'I was in Zurich the other day, in a store whose name I will not mention. I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and my little sandals. But obviously 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' is not shown in Zurich.

'I go into a store and I say to the woman, 'Excuse me, could I see the bag right above your head?' and she says to me, 'No. It's too expensive.''  

The saleswoman went on to suggest she look at cheaper bags. 'I left the store but it proves that racism is still an issue,' Oprah added.  

'There's two different ways to handle it.  I could've had the whole blow-up thing... but racism still exists, of course it does.'

The handbag in question was on sale for £24,460 and was locked in a cabinet to prevent shoplifting.

The incident occurred in the chic Trois Pommes store whose owner, Trudie Götz, ironically was also a guest at the Turner nuptials.

She told the Blick newspaper there had been 'a misunderstanding' caused by the assistant’s failure to recognise Oprah.

She apologized for her assistant’s behaviour, saying there had been 'a misunderstanding between her and Oprah. We don’t have any facial controls here.'

The assistant's conduct was 'completely unacceptable', said Markus Hünig, president of the Zurich Bahnhofstrasse Association, the street where the tony boutique is situated.

The incident comes as the Alpine state is engulfed in a wider row over racism as communities seek to ban asylum seekers from places like churches and libraries for fear they will 'upset' the natives.

Switzerland has strong right-wing elements linked to the wider neo-Nazi scene in Europe.  

Two years ago an anti-immigrant party ran on a platform of curbing immigration, showing on a poster a field of white sheep kicking out a black one.

During the same interview, Winfrey went on to say that racism was still prevalent in many walks of life.

She added that as a high-profile and wealthy celebrity, she experienced overt forms of racism quite infrequently but sexism was far more common. 

'True racisim is being able to have power over somebody else. So that doesn't happen to me that way. 

'It shows up for me this way, it shows up that sometimes I'm in a board room or I'm in certain situations where I'm the only woman, or I'm the only African American person within a 100 mile radius, and I can see in the energy of the people there, they don't sense that I should be holding one of those seats. 

'I can sense that. I can never tell is it racism or is it sexism, because often it's both. 

'The sexism thing is huge. The higher the ladder you climb, it gets huge.'