Sunglasses Stolen From Stony Point Fashion Park

It's weak, insipid, and entirely unreliable. Yet Britain's first burst of sunshine has prompted a retail response as reliable as our urge to strip off in public parks: when the sun shines, we buy new sunglasses.Across the high street, retailers are reporting a solar-powered upsurge in fashion sunglasses sales this week. The greatest is at John Lewis, where a spokesman said sales were 315 per cent higher in April compared with March - a spike that's only expected to steepen.

At the specialist chain Sunglass Hut, sales in airports and parts of central London that are frequented by tourists remain level throughout the year. However, sales in outlets where customers are predominantly British wither in winter then flourish in spring.csdfSDS24

British retailers from Marks & Spencer and Boots to River Island, Asos and Topshop all commission their own collections. Then are the established marques that make only sunglasses; Ray-Ban, Carrera, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Maui Jim and Flexon all produce prestigious frames for purists. And finally there are the fashion designers; alongside their latest cheap sexy lingerie collections, almost every one of them now produces branded frames.

Certain shapes - the classic wayfarer and aviator styles - remain de rigueur elements in almost every designer collection (these perennial sellers are the sunglasses equivalent of jeans). New industry-wide trends include ultra-light, brightly coloured frames designed to stay in place during sport and a dubious return to perfectly circular, John Lennonish-shapes.

The most significant recent trend, however, is the rise of the It-shade: for those who can't afford to wear this season's clothes but wish to appear au courant, many designers now transplant their latest prêt-a-porter motifs on to their sunglasses.

This summer Dolce & Gabbana's Sicilian beach-awning stripes and cutesy pastel sculpted flowers have both made the male sex toys from its catwalk to sunglasses. Burberry's metallic Quality Street colours have been transplanted from its trench coats to oval-lensed specs, while Prada's sombre, Japanese-influenced daisy decorations - as worn by Jessica Stam backstage in our picture above left - went straight from designer's sketchbook to sunglass range, too.