Is Farrow & Ball’s business model flaking?

The happiest thing that happens in May is the coming into leaf of my long beech hedge. The shift from brown to green symbolises, for me, an annual economic revival — of openings, reopenings and entrepreneurial optimism. This year, after April’s frosts on the end of a dismal winter, it was especially welcome. And as revival collides with new fears of ‘the Indian variant’, I’m clinging to optimism while watching for new-season winners and losers. In that spirit, I’ll make this column a collage of consumer themes.

First — though I’m not sure what this symbolises — a friend tells me he celebrated relative freedom by driving to Bicester Village to buy ten pairs of Y-fronts. Chacun à son goût: I’m reminded that I used occasionally to dive into the Debenhams menswear basement in Oxford Street in search of Calvin Kleins. But what a dull dog that store chain had become long before lockdown sealed the fate of its last 28 outlets, which closed for good a few days ago.