The New York address was nothing unusual - small Scottish boutique Little Lies ships globally and frequently has orders from the US.

But little did staff know, as they packaged up the green velvet dress, that this international purchase was for delivery to a global superstar - and about to make them go viral.

The customer in question? Taylor Swift.

"I think in the beginning, to be honest, I had absolutely no concept of what it was going to do or what it meant," Little Lies co-founder Jade Beatson said.

"And I think if it had been any other dress, if it was a huge brand or a designer brand, the press wouldn't have been the same - it wouldn't have been such a story.

"Naively, I was just so pleased and so proud to see her wearing one of our dresses I didn't really think twice about it."

Ms Beaton and her husband Stuart Robertson set up their fashion brand in the spare bedroom of their Perthshire home nearly nine years ago.

The now-mother-of-one had become frustrated with the lack of clothing choices on the high street, particularly for women who wear larger sizes.

She decided to take matters into her own hands and begin an online shop in July 2015 selling the sorts of things she wanted to buy herself.

Little Lies is now no stranger to celebrity purchases - Denise Van Outen and Helena Bonham Carter are both previous customers.

With respect to the TV presenter and the actress, Taylor Swift - with her devoted legion of fans - was next level.

After confirming it was really the superstar who had purchased the dress, Little Lies put out the word on social media and were very soon in the international media spotlight.

Ms Beatson said: "There was a radio interview when they introduced me as somebody who's gone viral.

"And I was like, 'Is this viral?' It hadn't even crossed my mind at that point that had gone viral."

As well as national television, radio and print had contacted the store for comment, Ms Beatson had a call from People - one of the best read American magazines.

Taylor Swift was spotted wearing the Little Lies dress - which she ordered under a fake name - to a night out in New York with the actress Blake Lively.

The publicity caused sales to skyrocket for the company.

Ms Beatson and her staff carried out a thorough search for green velvet dresses online and didn't find anything that would match.

She said: "And then we started digging into our order history and were able to discover that this was definitely our dress.

"It's absolutely wild."

The dress was going to be one of the "core pieces" for the shop this year but it has now completely sold out.

Ms Beatson plans to re-stock the dress in black and says she has "done well" on pre-orders for both green and black dresses.

This seems somewhat of an understatement when she adds that the business exceeded its one month target in one day.

The response has been extremely welcome as Ms Beatson said the company - like many businesses - was feeling the strain post-covid and in the current economic climate.

She said: "I think everybody I speak to in any business whatsoever just had a really difficult year - operating a business in such a volatile economic climate is hard anyway.

"There's such a massive shift at the minute with how people live their lives, what they want to do, the things that used to work when it came to business just don't get the same response anymore.

"With the cost of living crisis everybody's kind of unsure, and they don't really have money to spend.

"It's just a really odd time and it's very unsettling and actually everybody that I know, myself included, and any other business owner that I've spoken to has found 2023 was much more challenging and unsettling than even through the pandemic because, you know, it was very unknown, but he kind of went with it because it was the pandemic.

"But I think we all thought last year that finally it's going to be better now and then last year was just even worse, way worse.

"And this year for a lot of businesses it is looking to be even more difficult again."

There was a point where she and her husband seriously considered whether they wanted to continue with the business.

She added: "Over the end of last year and even last week, before this, looking ahead to a new year was really daunting and I didn't know what this year was going to bring.

"I didn't want another year of being in the same position as we had been last year of the mental and emotional impact of the constant grind of everything.

"A few weeks ago, I was considering whether this is even what we want to do - do I want my family to live our lives being business owners and struggling to feel motivated and leading a team when things are difficult?"

Parting from the company would have been a wrench as Ms Beatson describes it as very much "a labour of love" for which she and her husband have "worked every hour at the sacrifice of work/life balance."

When covid struck the Little Lies high street boutique closed but "we really thought, we can't let this all collapse because of a little thing like a global pandemic," she added.

The business is a passion project and the couple decided to move it back to being online only.

Mr Robertson had been a mechanical engineer. But when their daughter was born two years ago, Ms Beaton realised she couldn't keep running the business herself so her husband left his job and joined the business full time.

She said: "I feel I don't work in the fashion industry, because to me, it's a lot more about personal style and celebrating self expression and just being who you want to be instead of following trends.

"I feel that over the years, the High Street has just kind of diluted and diluted even further until everywhere you go in to it's just all the same.

"There were alternative brands but I felt that as somebody who's into my music and things, they were goth or really extreme alternative.

"There was a bit of a gap for something just in the middle with a bit of personality to it and it was a bit different to the mainstream, but it wasn't latex."

Initially the boutique stocked brands from around the world but for the past year it has been an in-house own label brand using an in-house design team.

One of the unique aspects of the company is that all of its clothing comes in inclusive sizing from eight to 24 with no pieces solely in smaller sizes.

Ms Beatson said: "There's brands that I've always loved their aesthetic, but there's no inclusion so as a size 14, I can't fit in their largest size.

"I don't understand it. I don't know why you would choose to exclude a market. It doesn't make sense to me.

"The average woman in the UK is a 16. So why do so many brands stop at that size?"

Now interest in the business is at an all-time high - with repeat customers already making additional purchases on the website - Ms Beatson is poised for what might happen next.

She said: "That's the bit I'm bracing myself for - what happens now, is it going to drop back down to what it was before? What's our new baseline?

"I'm really interested to see how it all plays out.

"We're kind of just ready to ride the wave."