UNLESS you've been holed up in some remote mountain for the last two years and cut off from civilisation, you would have some inkling that the world economy is ill - very ill.

There's no escaping the signs: sales and discounts are everywhere. Your banker friends have traded in their flashy cars for the environment-friendly ez-link card. And your next-door neighbour has started practising daylight saving time by hitting the sack the moment the sun sets, just to save on electricity.

The handwriting's all over the wall in the high castles of fashion land as well.

February's New York Fashion Week saw designers Betsey Johnson and Vera Wang buck the usual runway show in the tent at Bryant Park for a scaled-back presentation of their fall 2009 collection.

And on the other side of the continent, Roberto Cavalli had to disappoint scores of fans by cancelling his Just Cavalli catwalk show, the highlight of Milan Fashion Week, just two days before the event.

The last time the world had it this bad during the Great Depression, women's skirt lengths all over the world headed southwards, thus fulfilling the theory posited by US economist George Taylor in 1926, who said that women's hemlines rose in good times and fell in bad.

Thank goodness this trend hasn't caught on in this recession - and I hope it never does.

So, there must still be hope yet for some of us who have had enough of all the gloomy recession talks and who are sick of buying yet another 'recession chic' outfit on sale just because it is the practical thing to do.

Practical, shmactical - just give me unapologetic glamour, flamboyance and, dare I say it, decadence.
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Pure, unadulterated, guilt-free dressing that the fashion world is best known for. Save the sacks for the potatoes, please!

And mind you, I'm not the only one fighting back months of oppressive doomsday sentiment and recessionista mantras.

In the last fortnight, I've attended two private designer events where a roomful of ladies took to the gorgeous, full-priced outfits with a vengeance usually reserved for hardened housewives at a Robinson's bedlinen sale.

I spoke to one of them. Her buying frenzy excuse? Anti-recession therapy. Makes absolute sense to me.

If there is one thing fashion provides, that's the opportunity to dream; wear a dream and feel like one.

As American fashion designer Ralph Lauren so aptly puts it: 'I don't design clothes, I design dreams.'

And if like me, you have to indulge in that one dreamy anti-recession item this season, go for the Spicy - Marc Jacobs' latest creation for Louis Vuitton to hit cult status.

It is a towering 4.5 inches of exotic python leather, patent calf, feather, suede and karung wearable art.

This is one mountain that I wouldn't mind climbing and I'd most probably stay there till this recession blows over.

This article was first published in The New Paper