The company behind Miss Sixty, one of the best-known young fashion brands in the UK, fell into administration today.

Sixty UK said that it had appointed Vantis, the business recovery specialist, to oversee a “corporate restructuring”.

Peter Hollis, a partner at Vantis, told The Times that the company needed to negotiate new terms with its landlords in light of the far tougher trading climate. “The difficulty this company has had is that it is growing in the wrong economic climate,” he said.

There are no immediate plans for any redundancies among the company’s 250 employees. Sixty UK runs both the Miss Sixty and Energie brands. It has 12 stores and a wholesale business with concessions in Selfridges and House of Fraser.

Sales reached £28 million in the year to December 31, 2006, according to the company’s last published accounts, but it ran up losses of £2.3 million. Sixty UK’s Italian parent company is unaffected. The move came only a day after Hennes & Mauritz, the Scandinavian fashion giant, surprised analysts by missing third-quarter targets and reporting its slowest earnings growth for five years.

Asos, the online fashion retailer, said it believed that increasing numbers of younger shoppers were switching to the internet. The company, which sells more than 17,000 products modelled on the styles of celebrities such as Kate Moss and Sienna Miller, yesterday reported sales growth of 104 per cent for the six months to September 30.

Nick Robertson, Asos chief executive, said: “We are building momentum. We’re not seeing any slowdown.”

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