UPDATE 3-SuperGroup super hot as sales soar - Celebrities

* Q1 total sales up 59.8 pct to 32.8 million pounds
* Q1 retail sales up 62.7 pct, wholesale sales up 53.9 pct
* CEO says does not expect growth to slow
* SuperGroup shares down 4.2 pct at 1,101 p, index flat
(Adds CEO, analyst comment, updates shares)
By James Davey
LONDON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - SuperGroup (SGP.L), the British
company behind the Superdry fashion brand worn by celebrities
such as David Beckham, reported soaring sales, underscoring its
status as one of the hottest fashion labels around.
But shares in the retailer and wholesaler, which listed at
500 pence in March, fell 4.2 percent to 1,101 pence by 1204 GMT,
valuing the business at about 823 million pounds ($1.27
billion), having risen 7 percent on Monday. The FTSE All Share
index was 0.2 percent lower.
"It's had a very strong run, so it's just a bit of profit
taking," said Nick Bubb, analyst at Arden Partners.
SuperGroup, which had Britain's most successful IPO so far
this year, said on Tuesday total sales jumped 59.8 percent to
32.8 million pounds in the three months to Aug. 1, its fiscal
first quarter.
Founder and Chief Executive Julian Dunkerton, who along with
SuperGroup's other management shared 105 million pounds of the
120 million pound IPO proceeds, forecast a successful year
outcome and said he would not expect growth in sales of the
company's trademark T-shirts, hoodies, check shirts and jogging
bottoms to slow, despite tough macro headwinds.
"I see no reason to believe that we will not continue
growing in the nature that we have been growing. Young people
have to look good," he told Reuters.
Dunkerton said SuperGroup, unlike fashion brands such as
French Connection (FCCN.L), would sustain its growth because it
was hitting a gap in the market for quality, value for money,
branded clothing that is not reliant on one product or one logo.
SuperGroup, whose clothes are a favourite of film stars
Leonardo DiCaprio and Zac Efron, trades from 49 stand-alone
Superdry and Cult stores in Britain and 64 concessions and has a
wholesale business in 34 countries.
The company has a 20 stores a year opening programme and
sees scope for 150 Superdry and Cult stores in UK/Ireland.
Watch Celebrities Online

Hungarian artists alongside greats in London show - Arts

LONDON (Reuters) - Hungarian artists hang alongside some of Europe's greatest painters in a new blockbuster exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts put together at the 11th hour after the original show fell through.
"Treasures from Budapest: European Masters from Leonardo to Schiele" opens on Friday and features around 230 works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and Hungarian National Gallery.
The London exhibition was scrambled together in only a few months when a show featuring treasures from the Prince of Liechtenstein's collection was canceled in December following a dispute over the export of one of the prince's paintings.
Kathleen Soriano, director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy, said the Hungarian museums offered the institution "carte blanche" to select works for the show and within three months they had made their choices.
For the Hungarian partners, the exhibition at one of Britain's top galleries was a rare opportunity to showcase one of Eastern Europe's finest collections and teach the West something about the history of Hungarian art.
"First of all it helps focus London's cultural interest on East and Central Europe, and more specifically on Budapest," said Ferenc Csak, general director of the Hungarian National Gallery.
"Secondly, the idea is to choose a selection of Eastern European art and present it alongside the international artists," he told Reuters.
And so a 1711 self-portrait of Adam Manyoki, one of Hungary's foremost painters of the 18th century, hangs in the same room as portraits by the likes of Peter Paul Rubens, Frans Hals and Joshua Reynolds.
And Philip de Laszlo's portrait of Pope Leo XIII dated 1900 shows how he was inspired by earlier papal paintings which he would have seen while working in Rome, notably that of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velazquez.
ALTARPIECE, MASTER DRAWINGS
The opening room of the exhibition is dominated by the towering "St. Andrew Altarpiece" from Hungary in 1512, made for a small village church and which survived Turkish and Protestant iconoclasm when many medieval religious works were destroyed.
At the heart of the exhibition is a selection of more than 80 old master drawings, which include works by Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Duerer and Giambattista Tiepolo.
Many came from the Esterhazy collection, acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in 1871. The collection began in the 17th century and expanded during the rule of Prince Nikolaus II Esterhazy.
It includes one of the most priceless works in the exhibition, the so-called "Esterhazy Madonna" by Raphael, which an 18th century Esterhazy prince probably obtained from Austrian statesman and collector Prince Kaunitz.
Watch Arts Online