There is no Gucci shop hidden in the narrow stone streets, but signs of the good life are everywhere: galleries, restaurants, elegant stores and lots of construction.

Although the grandest, Bamberger's, now Macy's, remains open, it is just a shadow of the elegant store it once was.

It was an elegant store noted for its fashionable clothes.

But this is more than an elegant store.

The managers of elegant stores say the stands would undermine its reputation as a deluxe thoroughfare.

She wore a nicely fitting black track suit and was carrying two shopping bags from elegant stores, wrapping tissue peeking out of both.

The American designer cut the ribbon on this elegant store on Dublin's most prestigious shopping street in late 2008.

He remembered nostalgically Florida Street with its elegant stores and the itinerant multitude.

"An elegant store that would fit in with the types of office tenants that don't want to be in a plain vanilla, glass curtain-wall building."

The humor is clearly meant to ease anxieties consumers might face about shopping at an imposingly elegant and expensive store.