“Japan’s trend-chasing office workers and ladies who lunch are giving up Louis Vuitton handbags and Chanel jackets for Zara dresses and Gap jeans, making what was a favourite market for luxury manufacturers into one of their biggest headaches.

The downturn is forcing customers in Japan to scale back purchases of luxury goods, accelerating a long-term shift in consumer attitudes, according to a report by McKinsey.

Japan became the world’s “only mass luxury market” in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Japanese consumers saw ownership of a Louis Vuitton bag or Hermes scarf as a middle-class rite of passage.