Has it ever struck you that the fashion industry needs to be told the story of the emperor's new clothes? You have undoubtedly seen those European fashion shows that our television stations increasingly inflict on us in which sour-faced bony hags wearing awkwardly draped textiles that you never see on the street are applauded for the highly skilled job of walking towards a camera.
The applause in turn comes from an audience of people who think a mighty lot of themselves and show it with just that touch of raggedness in their appearance that would qualify them for membership of the Foreign Correspondents' Club were the raggedness not the result of attention but rather inattention to detail.
What it all so desperately needs is one common sense little nipper who, if he can't quite say that the hags are wearing no clothes, at least puts the show into proper human perspective with a loud horse laugh.
But we have at least come a step closer to it recently with, of all things, Hong Kong tourists dropping in on fashion retailers in Italy. It seems, according to luxury goods chain Louis Vuitton, that Hong Kong people are buying fashion goods in Italian shops with the express purpose of passing them over to mainland counterfeit agents waiting outside. The goods are then shipped to the mainland for copying.
'Every day we'll have five or six Hong Kong tourists coming in and demanding to buy the latest products,' says one Louis Vuitton manager. 'We know most of them are not buying for themselves because many buy without a second's consideration.' We shall ignore for the moment that this actually would make them Japanese, given Hong Kong's historic experience with fashion goods shoppers who buy without a second's consideration.
But the Italians are not putting up with it any longer. Outside the shops they have now posted anti-counterfeit agents and if these stalwart enforcers of the law catch anyone handing over a bag to someone suspicious they will call in the police. It is a serious matter, they say.
It is actually a big horse laugh. The way for Hong Kong people to risk getting in trouble for breaches of fashion copyright law is now to buy the legitimate articles from the legitimate retailers in the countries where the brand names originate. Their ethnicity alone will put them under instant suspicion when they do it.