Hermes still in fashion Britain’s housing divide

LUXURY fashion house Hermes is celebrating soaring profits as wealthy customers continue to splash out on silk scarves and expensive handbags.

The French firm posted a 15pc jump in profits to £1.2bn last year as sales climbed 7.5pc to £5.1bn.

Hermes tableware, jewellery and bathing products performed particularly well, with sales up 20pc.

The fashion house sells crockery such as soup tureens costing up to £3,880 and platters which cost as much as £2,070. There was also strong demand for shoes such as calfskin jumping boots, which sell for £2,330.

Asia accounts for half of the firm’s sales, raking in £2.5bn from customers in the region, an 8.6pc increase on a year earlier. Handbags and other leather goods contributed to the bulk of sales, rising by 6.3pc to £2.6bn.

Chairman Axel Dumas said: ‘This year again, Hermes achieves a remarkable performance and confirms the strength of the group’s growth model.’

Hermes is owned by luxury group Kering which also houses brands such as Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga.

It employs 14,284 staff around the world and has shops in France, Japan, America and the UK. HOUSE prices in London have fallen by the fastest rate for almost a decade amid a new regional divide in the market. The value of the average home in the capital dropped to £472,230 in January, down 1.6pc on a year earlier and the steepest fall since September 2009. But prices rose in almost every other region south of the Border, led by the East Midlands, where they climbed 4.4pc to £192,757. The next best performer was the West Midlands, where prices climbed 4pc to £195,399, according to the Land Registry data. North-West England was in third place with a rise of 3.4pc to £160,811. It is thought that the London property market has fared particularly badly because prices had risen so high in recent years while buyers have been put off amid concerns over Brexit. The capital suffered particularly heavy falls in Westminster, where average values dropped 14pc to £1.1m, and Camden, where they fell 8.3pc to £788,656.

Sales have also been hit from a stamp duty hike for the most expensive properties that was brought in by former chancellor George Osborne.

Ewen Bunting, head of sales at London estate agent James Pendleton, said: ‘No one was expecting fireworks after new year while the clock runs down on Brexit, but things appear to be coming to a head rather earlier than we had initially expected.’

The only other English region to see a fall in prices was the East, where there was a drop of 0.2pc to £288,494.

Overall for the UK, prices climbed 1.7pc in the year to January, hitting an average of £228,147.