"They have been flying out of the store!" I'm assured by buyers at Selfridge's, who also report a 65% sales hike in the last month.
PPR, the French conglomerate whose stable of luxury labels includes Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and most recent addition Christopher Kane, announced this month a sales hike of 6.3% in 2012, with Gucci, reportedly, accounting for 60% of the revenue.
There might be a discreet note on the back of a winning book, but it's not the ticket to a 440% sales hike as triumph in the Man Booker is.
That would follow an announcement a few weeks ago of a 5% year-over-year sales hike in November, which outpaced much of the retail industry.
These days, though, where the department store once seemed the domain of middle-class English grannies and a no-go zone for style-conscious yuppies, M&S has surprised everyone by transforming its image from homely to chic, with a sales hike to boot.
How would it look for a few really rich people to try to fund the case that voters should vote down a quarter cent sales tax hike when the great bulk of the tax hike is on rich people like themselves?
One supportive analyst even took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times the Friday before the election to write that Brown had to jettison the hard-won and historic high-speed rail project to win the initiative, which consists of a temporary tax hike on the wealth and a temporary quarter-cent sales tax hike.
"The data were poor because the economy is taking time to recover after the sales tax hike in April.
"I don't think the B.O.J.'s view that the sales tax hike won't derail the recovery is too optimistic," said Junko Nishioka, chief Japan economist at RBS Securities.
8.15am GMT Onto Japan's central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda -- should we be concerned that the looming sales tax hike will scupper the Japanese recovery?
