Hermès, the luxury Parisian fashion house, says it cannot produce enough silk scarfs and luxury handbags to meet soaring demand.

The 174-year-old company, regarded as the must luxurious of the super-luxe labels, announced a 50% jump in first-half profits to €291m due to huge demand for its Kelly and Birkin handbags in the US and Japan, despite the economic downturn.

But Patrick Thomas warned investors that the company would not be able to maintain its stellar performance for the rest of the year because it was running out of stock.

The company said it had taken on almost 400 new employees to try and keep up with demand for its products according to the Guardian.

“We haven’t yet seen a reduction in the number of people coming into our shops, not even in Japan [following the earthquake and tsunami disaster]”, Thomas said.

“The trend is still very good, but is lower than that of the first half. This is not at all due to a drop in the number of people in our stores.”

“There are stores where we are a little tight on stocks. This isn’t an alert. It’s not serious. We are selling at the rate we are producing.”