As part of the Vogue Night of Fashion event on Thursday night, the Swedish label, held a pop-up studio to whet the appetite of Sydneysiders, as a precursor to the opening of the City store in Pitt Street Mall. Its first Sydney store will open at the AMP Shopping Centre's Macquarie Centre in October. The first Australian store opened in April in Melbourne's former GPO building.

This comes as retail sales have moved ahead for the month of July, by 0.4 per cent to $23 billion, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The gains were in line with economists' expectations and were released a day after the Reserve Bank  kept the official interest rate unchanged at 2.5 per cent.

While some commentators say consumer spending is fragile and weak sales at department stores support this view, retailers said the inflow of the foreign labels has given renewed vigour to shoppers.

Savanth Sebastian, the economist at CommSec said households have been a lot more positive in the past couple of months.

"The have shrugged off the initial blues about the Federal Budget and even the jump in the 12-year high jobless rate has been put on the backburner. Confidence levels have lifted to just shy of the best levels in seven months and it has translated through to a lift in spending," he said.

"In addition, discretionary [non-food] spending is now up 6.1 per cent on a year ago, just shy of the four and a half year high reached earlier this year.

"Whichever way you cut it, the signs are certainly a lot more upbeat for the retail sector. In fact it is very likely that moving into the warmer months and in the lead up to Christmas, sales should continue to lift with further support likely to be provided by the lift in home construction."

This has led to more positive rental assumptions for landlords.

The latest JLL Retail Centre Managers' Survey found rental growth expectations stabilised in the August survey, with 37 per cent of respondents expecting some rental growth over the next 12 months, a similar result to the February survey of 38 per cent.

JLL's Australian head of property and asset management, Richard Fennell said there are small positive signs emerging despite continued subdued retail performance.

"However, it is probably more correct to say that centre managers are "less negative" about the year ahead rather than "more positive".  It was significant that we recorded the lowest level of negative responses about rental growth, since the first survey three years ago," he said.