Whatever Kate Middleton touches seems to turn to gold – or, at least, sell out in shops and online. Remember the  cream silk Reiss dress that she wore for her official engagement photo? Once re-released, the £159 dress sold out a rate of one per minute and crashed the Reiss website, while some canny shoppers put them straight on to ebay for up to £750 (you can currently buy one for £380, if you’re interested). Kerching!

It’s what’s known as ‘The Duchess Effect’  - and it looks like Reiss in particular have been touched by it. While some other high street stores are struggling, Reiss have just posted some pretty impressive stats – with sales up from £77.7million to £87.6million. Experts are saying that it’s all down K-Middy being such a fan of the store; although Kate wears various high street labels (Topshop, LK Bennett in particular) in the past year she’s worn Reiss to some pretty high profile events. Take this nude Shola dress that Kate wore to meet Michelle Obama at Buckingham Palace – the £175 dress sold out (again) and traffic to www.reiss.co.uk was boosted by a whopping 200%.

She caused a sell-out when she wore the Shola Reiss dress to meet Michelle Obama at Buckingham Palace:

Then, there was that cream engagement dress again – this time, worn on the royal tour of Canada with a red hat:

And finally – a cream Peacock Reiss dress, costing £195, worn to the races earlier this year:

 
Although keeping schtum about their most famous client, we reckon Reiss must be pretty chuffed with themselves. Here’s to another year of nude/cream/white dresses…maybe we could introduce some colour next time, K-Mid?