High days and holidays: oil nudges US$100 (£48.37) a barrel; a euro is now worth 50 per cent more than a dollar.

So what? It takes more than subprime to weaken a superpower and America’s retailers are giving thanks again to this nation of shoppers who, in last Friday’s big bonanza, spent 8.3 per cent more than last year.

Global spending on luxury goods is growing at an even faster rate. New billionaires are swelling the ranks of the super rich, alongside Middle Eastern potentates, bonus-boosted businessmen, lawyers and financiers, the stars of pop, film and sports (and WAGS), plus the designers whose clothes they wear and the restaurateurs who feed them all.

But one no longer needs to be rich to be famous. Reality TV has put paid to that.

And one no longer needs to be rich to buy luxury goods – not necessarily the real ones, of course, but fewer of us seem to care these days. Piracy has moved off the gangplank and onto the catwalk. Why pay a lot in designer salons if you can buy lookalikes for so little in the chain stores, where the designers themselves even deign to lend their names?

Recent research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that a third of consumers aged 18 to 45 would buy fake luxury clothes or accessories. If fake fur can be chic, why not a fake watch or bag?

Yet, while imitation can be flattering, counterfeiting is surely an insult. Luxury goods companies, despite excellent results, are becoming concerned. If only 50 per cent of consumers find it unacceptable to buy counterfeit goods, as recent research by PwC showed, it’s not surprising that customs’ seizures of them have increased tenfold in the past five years.

Improved manufacturing technologies and the explosive growth of a new distribution channel in eBay have made matters worse; so, too, has a commensurate increase in the trade of unlicensed goods (made, but undeclared, by official licensees and thus royalty-free).

What should the luxury goods companies do?

1 Reassess how diversification into more affordable categories is affecting brand prestige.

2 Roll out more directly owned stores and super-flagships. The four walls experience endorses the reality of the purchase.

3 Strengthen links to official web sites and create member-only online communities.

4 Conduct regular audits of licensees (PwC’s licensing team finds misreported royalties nine times out of 10).

5 Authenticate products with holograms or intelligent chips.

There are those who fake it and those who make it: the chavs and the chav-nots. The luxury of choice is not always a reality.

Michael Poynor, chief retail adviser, PricewaterhouseCoopers