PRINCES Street Marks and Spencer in the early run up to Christmas in Edinburgh. The woman peering at a display featuring “Mrs Claus” - the star of Marks and Spencer’s hugely popular Christmas 2016 advert - looks, in her crimson coat, as if she could have just stepped out of the commercial. Her friend does too. Both are in their sixties, both glamorous Mrs Clauses, up from Teeside on a shopping trip.

They admire an elegant red party dress. The women, whose feelings about the store’s fashion offerings in recent years have been mixed, were lured to Marks and Spencer, they confess, partly by seeing the Christmas advert. Denise Spruce declares she has even already bought the Mrs Claus red dress. Her friend, Susan Douglas, would also have happily bought one. “But,” she quips, “Denise had already got it.”

Douglas, however, is a little less enthusiastic about the store’s wider fashion record in recent times. “Sometimes they’re good, and sometimes not so good. It just depends. If I see something I’ll go and get it, and then try it on at home. But some of it is just not right.”

Times are tough for M&S, with the chain planning to close thirty stores across the UK and convert 45 more to food only. Between March and July the chain experienced its biggest drop in sales in clothing and home goods since 2005. It also reflected the fact the food section of the business was hugely successful, but the chain was failing and losing ground in clothing and home.

It’s hard, however, to see any obvious signs of this on the floor of the Princes Street branch. That’s partly because this is one of the chain’s 'thrivers'. The Princes Street food hall is the busiest in Scotland and its clothing department the 31st most successful in the UK. So here, at this store, staff seem almost giddy with excitement at the onset of what is to be, they imagine, another “very successful Christmas”, particularly in their food hall, which saw 900,000 people pass through it on Christmas week last year.

Most mobbed, they predict, will be December 23. Ebullient store manager Jenny McPartlin says: “It’s our busiest food day. Though in recent years the 24th has got busier and busier. We have to try and do quite a lot of calming of customers. There can be emotional outbursts if they can’t get the type of parsnips somebody wants. Because people get so het up.” The customers here, are, she describes, the “most interesting, eclectic and diverse” of any store she has worked in.

Occasionally this kind of pressure can get to the staff too. As service manager, Janice Thomson puts it, “Sometimes you need to go into the food office and scream for thirty seconds and then come back out and you’re fine.”

Thomson has worked in the Princes Street store for the past thirty years. Between now and the time since she first arrived, what has changed most, she says, is the stores around them. “Years ago it was just us. And we were the only people that sold turkeys, or at least that was what the customers thought, and it was just manic.” She recalls one Christmas 22 years ago, when the police had to come in and “we had to shut the food hall, it was just that busy”.

Various changes have, in recent months, been announced for the chain. Some have already happened: an editing of the clothing lines and rearranging of the stock to make finding things more easy – so that, here, in the Princes Street store, knitwear is now to be found in the knitwear section, coats in coats, with no muddling of things in coordinated sections just to confuse people. Back in May, chief executive Steve Rowe, also announced that the company were going to attempt to win-back what he called “Mrs M&S”, their target customer of over-fifties women, from rivals like Primark and Next.

The concept did not go down well. Many dismissed it as patronising. Even the staff at the Princes Street store now appear to squirm at her mention. “It was a bit of a Marmite moment,” says McPartlin. “My mum actually quite liked being referred to as Mrs M&S. I personally didn’t like it.”

However, with the new Mrs Claus ads, they seem to have won back the affection of that target audience. If this is who Mrs M&S is - in the ad she's a stylish figure sat James Bond-like at the controls of a shiny red helicopter - then many seem to like her. The staff at the Princes Street store seem excited by the campaign. “I think it’s really good that it’s a woman,” says store manager, Jenny McPartlin. “Because that’s our customer base. And she’s quite sassy and glam and in control.”

Given the success of the Princes Street store, there is little chance it will be among the thirty slated to close. However, the staff seem saddened by both the news of closures and the speculation in the press over which stores they will be. “There has been so much speculation,” says McPartlin, “and it’s been disruptive. Because we genuinely don’t know anything about which stores are going yet.” McPartlin who has previously worked at two of the stores that were listed, Aberdeen and Ayr, says, “I feel for those stores. Marks and Spencer is a real family. It genuinely is.”

In the womenswear department, manager Mary Power flicks along a rail of key items that are recent big sellers: from a cream puffa jacket through cashmere jumpers and leather gloves to a few striking items from the new Alex Chung range, which is only stocked by this and two other stores in Scotland. Power wants to get the store into the UK top thirty for sales of womenswear. “What has really helped this year is we’ve got more staff on the floor than ever before.” Staff numbers, in fact, have recently been increased in five stores across Scotland.

In fact, M&S clothing has often received rave reviews from fashion editors. Among them is the Sunday Herald’s Eva Arrighi. She observed too, that the Alexa Chung Limited Edition range had proved popular with Millennials. “Marks & Spencer for years now have been hitting it off beautifully with the fashion press,” she said, “but hopefully the store experience information they've been gathering the last couple of months will pay off, as the pieces are invariably very wearable, well made, well designed and actually really well priced.

One of the things that Marks & Spencer’s business has been based around is an ageing cohort of loyal customers who keep coming back. It’s not hard to find these in the Princes Street store. They’re the ones gliding round the food hall with trolleys part-loaded with groceries. Among them are 86-year-old Catherine Bird and her nephew’s wife, Liz Devine, who have paused in the aisle to chat.

Devine, it turns out, comes in on bus from Gilmerton every week for her “main shop” as well as occasional purchases of clothes and other sundries, though she’s not so keen on the fashion offering right now. “I’m quite disappointed with the blouses,” she says. “You know, they’re gearing up for the younger crowd now.” However, she declares, she loves “their meat, veg, salads, cakes” and she’ll be getting her Christmas shopping here, including her turkey crown. Already she has bought 21 boxes of chocolates as well as “about a dozen or more biscuits and shortbread” and observes, “the top of my wardrobe is full.

Her friend Catherine, however, is not quite so delighted. Though she’s been coming here for decades, since “practically it opened”, she has a few gripes. “I’m not happy about it,” she says. “They send these vouchers for reductions.” She gets her purse out and starts pulling out a coupon. “All the other shops reduce things for you automatically. But you’ve got to spend £35 here to gain £5. That is ridiculous. Why do they not give you a reduction anyway? Instead of this you’ve got to spend £35.”

So, why, then, does she keep coming? She shrugs. “We just feel that the stuff’s maybe better.”