If everyone agrees that fashion designers are the new rock stars, here’s a question: why aren’t the winners of hit television series such as Project Runway, like the winners of Pop Idol, the music talent search equivalent, making it big at a retail outlet near you? If a music industry shrinking because of illegal downloads can find room to promote new talent, surely the €160bn global luxury goods industry, growing healthily at 10 per cent a year, can comfortably accommodate these new finds?

Here’s the problem: for young designers to succeed, they require two precious commodities beyond design talent: money and organisation. But finding these in the fashion industry, unlike in the music industry, is hard. Indeed, a typical record label has a structure that has money and organisation at its core: the A&R people scout the talent; financing is made available to the new artist through royalties against future sales; the business affairs department sorts out the contracts; experienced producers and song-writers finesse the records; marketing makes sure the records are played on radio; and the sales department sorts out all the retailing deals.