With New York, London, and Milan Fashion Weeks behind us, the final Fashion Week is taking place at present in Paris. Amid the weakening economy and spreading insecurity, the fashion world must wait and see if the luxury consumer is still out there to purchase £10,000 dresses and £500 shoes.

High street fashion stores are already beginning to feel the financial pinch, as witnessed by Marks & Spencer, who saw shares drop by 32.5% last Wednesday alone . Will the global economic slowdown have any effect on the luxury purchases made by the upper classes?

Some high-end brands have started to see a slow down in sales, as consumers become jittery. Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute noted:

The reality is that even at the highest levels of wealth, there is some pull back.

Even in areas where one would not expect money to be considered, changes are beginning to surface. Fashion bible Vogue, that specializes in luxury brands, has bannered “Value-Conscious Chic, When to Spend, Where to Save’ on the front cover of its US September issue and Araks Yeramayan, owner of Araks, reveals that many fashion companies have had to pay for alcohol, catering, makeup and hair styling for their runway shows, an expense that has previously been picked up by sponsors.

Despite these trends, Fashion Weeks do not seem to have been interrupted. USA Today notes that designers are still ‘spending up big’ on their fashion shows, with Patrick McCarthy, editorial director of W and Women’s Wear Daily speculating that “there will be at least as many shows this seasons as last year and maybe even a few more.”

Following the recent New York and London Fashion Weeks, fashion has been a popular topic in the news and two stories are particularly worthy of mention in light of the counterfeit goods news we’ve been following recently.

First, this article in the New York Times discusses the speed at which copycats are taking couture designs to low and mid-range department stores–knockoff items can go from catwalk to shelf in as quickly as four to six weeks. The knockoff company discussed in the article can turn a photo emailed to the factory into a finished sample in 14 days. It can be months before the couture houses are ready to sell their wares–items from fall shows traditionally make it to high end shops by February.

Couture design aren’t subject to copyright, so fashion houses (through trade associations) are now pushing for protections similar to those criminalizing counterfeit goods in order to stop losing money from knockoffs.

But this article from the New Yorker suggests that this might not be wise. While counterfeit goods can fund unsavory black markets and activities, knockoffs feed the fashion industry in two useful and important ways.

First, the people who purchase couture knockoffs from H&M or Zara are not the same people who spend ten times as much to purchase a similar garment at Neiman Marcus. Arguably the couture houses really aren’t losing customers or business to knockoffs–and exposure to ‘couture-inspired’ designs may make young customers more willing to purchase the real thing in the future.

And second, knockoffs help the fashion industry induce obsolescence to fuel demand for new clothes. Couture houses need people to want to buy their garments season after season–what better way to make people desire new things than make them tired of what they have? Seeing ‘everyone’ wearing similar styles (through affordable knockoffs) makes neophiles willing to spend on the latest and greatest.

While counterfeit goods are clearly a problem, knockoff goods have a more symbiotic relationship with couture houses. They provide an interesting example of how businesses can be successful creatively and monetarily despite a lack of copyright protections.