Where do luxury goods go now?
Mark Tungate
It's 10am on a sunny Sunday morning and for once the Avenue des Champs-Elysées is quiet. Normally the distant Arc de Triomphe is obscured by a haze of exhaust fumes rising from two crawling lines of traffic, but today the view up the avenue from the Place de la Concorde is diamond clear.
The avenue is not entirely deserted, however. A motorcade of three large black cars makes its stately way to the Louis Vuitton flagship store at the corner of Avenue George V. The cars sigh to a halt outside the...