Next time you are in Bond Street, take a minute to press your nose against the window pane of a boutique for a seductive view of posh frocks and wacky shoes. Leer at the snooty shop assistants, giggle and leave a greasy smear on the glass. Do not go in and don’t make a purchase, because exclusive designer wear is clobber that is not for you.

High-end fashion retailing is for people who pay over the odds not to be near you or be seen by you, except in the gossip columns of magazines. It is a place where price secures exclusivity.

If that is true, why is Jimmy Choo selling stilettos and sandals at Hennes & Mauritz for £79? H&M is a chain store that sells T-shirts and denim for teenage kids, not diamante-encrusted silks for Paris Hilton. Logic suggests that a pile-em-high merchant, such as H&M, is too downmarket for Jimmy Choo’s exotic pumps — the bedazzling and bizarre thousand dollar foot clamps made famous by the TV series Sex and the City. What a comedown for Jimmy Choo to be forced to stock its over-the-top flimflam at H&M.

The great thing about recessions is that all consumer products find their natural home, their perfect price point. The end-of-year ritual of destocking, of discounting last year’s bad colour, wrong hemline or other disastrous idea is, in recession extended to a whole collection, even a brand. In other words, the chill wind has found Jimmy Choo a natural home not in Bond Street but in White City. The shoes are seen to be not premium but Primark, not luxury, just flashy.

This recession has been very bad for designer luxury and even if the slummy end of the high street is recovering, it isn’t over yet for people who sell £5,000 watches and £500 shoes. When the gale hit Wall Street last year and toppled a bank or two, several rash merchants insisted that the truly rich would carry on spending. They didn’t. Those who should know better forgot that the truly rich are truly mean.

Richemont, the Swiss company that owns a clutch of watch brands, said this week that half-year sales were down 15 per cent, while Burberry revealed a 19 per cent drop in profit. In October, LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton luggage and Tag Heuer watches, said that revenues over nine months had suffered a 6 per cent fall. The decline in watch and jewellery sales was 28 per cent, which it blamed on dealer destocking.

The hustlers of luxury could just sit tight, trim overheads and wait it out, but curious schemes are being hatched to get the top line moving. Ebel, a venerable maker of Swiss timepieces, is introducing a range of watches targeted at the daughters of the wealthy. A typical Ebel sells for SwFr4,000 (£2,360) and they go as high as SwFr8,000, but times are tough, so Ebel hopes to loosen Dad’s grip on his wallet with pieces for precious poppet costing less than SwFr2,000.

Cartier, too, is toying with a junior luxury range, with the launch of a new line of “welcome” products aimed at the young but comfortable. Marc Michel-Amadry, co-president of Ebel, said the firm needed to recruit the children of their customers to brand loyalty as well as deal with pricing problems. “Consumers have to think of value now. They have become more demanding,” he said.

That does not solve the branding problem. If your business is selling trinkets (or shoes) to the truly rich and vulgar, does it make sense to market a range that tells the buyer that her wealth is, frankly, a bit juvenile. Or that her shoes are junior Choos?

The pressure on these firms to generate more income is intense after a lost year. According to Ledbury Research, a consultancy that monitors the spending habits of our betters, the market for luxury goods will shrink by 15 per cent this year. Worse, it will barely improve next year, according to Ledbury, which is forecasting a mere 1 per cent increase in spending in 2010.

One-off designer promotions have become regular occurrences at H&M, which in previous years has puffed Stella McCartney and Karl Lagerfeld. Gap is also in on the act, as is Uniqlo, promoting Jil Sander. It is easy to see why this benefits H&M. Mass-market retailing is about footfall, drawing shoppers inside and getting them spending. It’s almost irrelevant how many Jimmy Choo gladiator heels are sold; what matters is the crowds and the extra impulse spending on tops, knickers and jeans.

But for luxury designers, this is a dance with the devil that could, if mishandled, destroy the cachet of a brand. James Lawson, a director at Ledbury, wonders how it benefits the likes of Jimmy Choo to be associated with H&M. “It’s a no-brainer for mass-market retailers, it creates awarenesss. But Jimmy Choo could easily produce £50 shoes. The question is: does it destroy their ability to sell £500 shoes?”

It raises the prospect that the posh end of fashion will segment into true luxury and copycat luxury, or “bubble brands”, which hop between high street and Bond Street until their stars fade.

Or is Jimmy Choo really on to something? Could it be that the bottom and top end of retailing are in some way connected, leaving the middle out on a limb? It is the puritan middle who sniff at gladiator heels, who scoff at toe-crunching stilettos. Who wears such stuff? Footballers wives, bankers’ wives and office girls from Romford. What lies between them is just a price tag.

carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk

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