Not coincidentally, Lamborghini also has a high-end apparel and accessories line.
Myhabit sells high-end apparel for men, women and children at deep discounts.
"Places like this are more important than ever to the remaining high-end apparel companies," he said.
Hirshleifer's, the venerable retailer specializing in high-end apparel from Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel, is undergoing renovation to triple its selling space.
But even this minor retail scrum was, in a way, of a piece with the zeitgeist: it was about snapping up a high-end apparel brand at apparently bargain prices.
The recent demise of the luxury clothing site Boo.com, sponsored by, among others, Bernard Arnault, the Benetton family, J. P. Morgan & Company and Goldman , Sachs & Company shows the unpredictability of selling high-end apparel on the Web.
"Right now, the name of Bangladesh just gives a bad rep to a company," said Mr. Model, the dapper chief executive of Joseph Model Associates, which designs and distributes the Annabelle New York brand of high-end apparel and also makes private-label brands for various department store chains.
Notorious for bringing a different date to every party, he is still surrounded by women — Sonya Molodetskaya, his girlfriend of nine years; Blanche Brown, his wife and the mother of his three adult children, who remains a friend though they have lived separately for a quarter-century; Sydney, a fourth child, 10, who, already fond of high-end apparel, appears to rule his life.
And because a lot of high-end apparel is hard to find online — compared with the amount shown on runways — it's not surprising that young women now seem to gauge their interest in a brand not in terms of its prestige or craft but rather in terms of its accessibility.
Ad pages in United States magazines fell 7.4percentt in the first half of 2008, according to the Magazine Publishers Association, but some categories appealing to affluent consumers — high-end apparel and other retail, and hotels and resorts — were roughly flat.
Owners of high-end apparel and accessories need money, so they sell off their luxury items.
