The outstanding world of Paris high luxury, where a customised handbag can cost more than a car, seems to survive during the financial crisis. Due to the recession of the global economy, a lot of companies are at the edge of bankruptcy. The French label Hermès made so much money this year that it is likely to post the best results of its 173-year history and has just opened a lavish new store in the old Art Deco swimming pool of a left bank hotel. But behind the success of silk-scarves and crocodile-skin clutches, Paris fashion is being torn apart by a saga of secretive empire-building and power-struggles dubbed the "handbag wars".

Hermès' bosses claim they were stupefied to discover that Arnault had built up a stake using a legal but shadowy derivatives system that masked his true identity. Hermès is one of the world's last independent fashion houses. The family shareholders who still control three quarters of its shares say the firm has deliberately distanced itself from mass-market techniques and resisted conglomerates. The brand's hand-crafted "it-bags",such as Authentic Hermes Purses Outlet, the Kelly and the Birkin, can run to tens of thousands of pounds if customers can stand joining a waiting list that once lasted six years. The Birkin bag's elitist image was not even damaged by suggestions that Victoria Beckham, the queen of bling, owned 100, worth a total of £1.5m. While the world luxury sector's profits dropped in 2009, Hermès has seen an 20% surge in sales in the first half of this year that has kept rising.

So though the market was shrinking in 2009, it still exists some opportunities to make profit nowadays.