The Platypus shop in downtown Manhattan is the sort of store that sells things you didn't know you needed until you saw them. It is stocked with aromatherapy candles, magic relaxation eye pillows, silver-plate champagne buckets, Indonesian coffee tables, beanie babies, quality coffee and fancy chocolate.

It's precisely the sort of store, in other words, that would be the first to suffer when the economy slows down. Or would it? I asked the perky manager, Ms Jackie Williams, if people were buying less, what with all the bleak news of plunging consumer confidence. "They're buying everything here, from furniture to silk flowers," she said happily. "In fact, we beat our monthly target two days ago."

So were they still buying things like these, I asked, pointing to the $24.95 "whimsical metal miniature sculptures" with suction cups for sticking to mirrors with messages like "Don't forget to floss". "Sometimes five at a time," she replied.

I rang some of the other nine Platypus stores along the east coast. After all, Manhattan is not America. Ms Carol Ann Piroso runs the Platypus store in a little upscale mall in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. There was no sign of a recession there either, she said. "We have sold above average every week for the first three weeks of January. People are still buying the three "Cs - coffee, candles and confectionary."

At the Shops at Liberty Place in Philadelphia, a city where the slowdown has hit the hardest, the Platypus store manager, Mr Brendan Gefri, said he too saw no sign of a slowdown. "I made my target for the month two days ago," he said. "Yesterday and today are the icing on the cake." Perhaps this only proves that people with the money to spend on such things as silver-plate champagne buckets are still not feeling the pinch.

It was much the same in other shops with fanciful wares, like the Store of Knowledge in Manhattan, where the manager, Ms Wendy Lydcin, said that, because of the time of year, it would expect a slowdown but that there was no sign of anything unusual. Shoppers were still buying the $299.99 Starfinder Telescopes and the little books of Taxi Driver Wisdom.

Perversely, shops which sell really necessary things such as household appliances are suffering. Black & Decker, for example, the world's largest maker of power tools, said last week that profit and sales fell in the fourth quarter. "The dramatic economic slowdown in the fourth quarter was disappointing," said Mr Nolan Archibald, chairman and chief executive of the Towson, Maryland based company.

Consumer spending on "big ticket" durable goods such as cars has fallen too but there is no evidence of an overall decline in spending, despite the report of the Conference Board that consumer confidence was plunging. It is the rate of growth that is falling - from 4.5 per cent in mid-2000 to 2.9 per cent in the fourth quarter.

Stores selling computers and music such as the J&R Television Centre at Park Row, New York are seeing a slight decline but everything is relative. I ordered a Sony television at J&R on January 7th. Demand is so heavy that I am still waiting for delivery.