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Framed Suede Crossbody bag by Burberry, $2,095 at Holt Renfrew (www.holtrenfrew.com).Tim Fraser/The Globe and Mail

Luxury goods are again on the rocks. On Tuesday, clothing retailer Burberry Group PLC warned that its global sales growth has slowed to a crawl. The shares plunged 22 per cent in London and dragged down other stocks associated with the high-end market, such as jewellery retailer Tiffany & Co., champagne-and-handbag maker LVMH and Gucci brand owner PPR.

But investors have seen this play out before. During the 2008 financial crisis, luxury goods companies were hammered disproportionately to the broader market, on concerns that no one would want to buy expensive clothing or jewellery when jobs, banks and entire economies were disappearing.

Yet, luxe proved to be remarkable resilient to the downturn – with Tiffany, at least, remaining profitable even during the worst quarters. The shares snapped back in the sudden realization that high-end retailers enjoyed a relatively bomb-proof niche, thanks largely to growing affluence in China.

Anyone who best on this resilience did very well. Tiffany shares bottomed out with the rest of the market in March, 2009, but had fully recovered from the downturn and were exploring new highs within 18 months. By July 2011, they had risen 394 per cent from their lows.

The Burberry snapback was even more extreme. The shares bottomed out before the rest of the market, in November 2008, and were at new highs by February 2010. By mid-2011, they had rebounded an extraordinary 900 per cent from their lows.

Does the current downturn present a similar buying opportunity?

Perhaps not, at least in the near term. While the last financial crisis and recession had global dimensions, the epicentre was in the developed world, where the growth in high-end fashions was relatively puny anyway. By contrast, emerging markets – China, in particular – held the most promise, and they delivered.

Now, though, China seems to have become the source of the problem, given the fact that Burberry's issues have been felt elsewhere in the sector. And what's most concerning is that there could be a cultural shift at work here that is overshadowing the economic slowdown.

Stacey Cartwright, Burberry's chief financial officer, pointed to China's changing leadership as a reason for the setbacks – and not just within the country. Consumers travelling from Asia to Europe also seem to be cutting back.

"We know we are not alone in terms of what we've seen in the last couple of weeks," Ms. Cartwright told Bloomberg News. "Traffic is down."

This echoes concerns expressed by hedge fund manager John Hempton of Bronte Capital in early August: He argued, very convincingly, that the murder-and-corruption charges against Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai were going to discourage Chinese politicians from flaunting their wealth as they have in the past.

But the stock market appears to be treating the Burberry setback as a relatively isolated incident for the time being: While other luxury stocks were down on Tuesday, they were not hit nearly as hard.

That could change. "We would not be surprised if other luxury players are seeing similar trends," said Kate Calvert, an analyst at Seymour Pierce, according to Bloomberg.

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