It seems like our horrible economy is finally catching up to high fashion, an industry whose excess during the last 8 years looks increasingly insensitive in the face of a growing inequality between rich and poor in developed countries.

The Sex and the City ideal of the past decade coupled with constant celebrity coverage in the media convinced women and men without the means that they had to own products by luxury brands like Chanel and Prada to be socially relevant. These overpriced items usually lost their stylistic value in a few months and in order to keep up with what Vogue or W Magazine determined they should own that season, many of these consumers would go deeper and deeper into credit card debt assuming the fantasy world of the Bush years would last forever.

But now with the frightening unknowns of a major economic crisis looming, these same middle and lower class consumers are waking up and realizing the terrible trap they were caught in and are deciding in massive numbers to forgo spending their dwindling dollars on such excess.

Some in the fashion world are at least attempting to appear concerned. Recently, the oracle of the fashion world, Vogue chief Anna Wintour in a interview with the Wall Street Journal talked about the boom era, "...I think it was excessive, and there's a very correct correction going on." Wintour's magazine reflected her new posture on affordability by featuring First Lady Michelle Obama on the most recent cover. Obama, a freshly minted fashion icon dresses her family in the sensible, affordable styles of J. Crew and the GAP.

Like it or not, the luxury brands are being forced to take notice of the world's fashion conscious shift. A great example is what's happening in Japan. Japanese shoppers, whether buying locally or around the world account for roughly half of the global luxury-goods market. After falling by 2 percent the previous year the luxury market there was expected to drop by 7 percent in 2008 and it looks to get much worse in 2009.

An article in this month's Atlantic Magazine reported on Japan's youth culture and it's almost total lack of desire for luxury products. A massive change from just a decade ago which saw some Japanese women turn to prostitution in order to afford the latest high fashion.

For young Japanese, as for youth everywhere, the more that personal style differs from their parents’, the better. Junpei Kosaka, a 26-year-old advertising executive, can afford to buy luxury brands but chooses not to. Brands like Armani, he sniffs, are “for rich old dandies.”

Despite global economic gloom, the "let them eat cake" attitude still persists in the fashion world. At the recent couture shows in Paris, designers showed little restraint in their designs and execs bloviated about the magic of fashion and how important it is to escape the realities of a this hard-knock world. "Something to make people dream," said Bernard Arnault, chair and chief executive of LVMH Group and Christian Dior. One gets the feeling that if the citizens of that hard-knock world are dreaming about fashion, they are dreams of affordable clothes that don't insult their stylistic senses. Gods of high fashion take note and read up on the results of of the last tumultuous era of inequality. The ghost of Marie Antoinette might have some advice for you. 

Dorsey Shaw is the Video Content Manager and Producer at Air America Media