But for a small knot of architects, designers and their suppliers - the ones who have carved out a niche working for the city's moneyed elite - things have gone from good to great.

When Hong Kong's property market was red hot, most designers went after what the industry would now dismiss as the ``easy money.''

They aggressively chased corporate contracts, decorating offices for the growing number of companies seeking to profit from the regional boom of the 1990s.

Spoiled by undemanding clients who considered them the ultimate arbiters of what was hot and what was not, they felt only pity for those of their peers enslaved by the whims of the ultra rich.

But the sector found itself living its own version of the grasshopper and ant fable after the 1997 Asian crisis, when many firms folded and others left town.

Architects and designers who had gotten fat on corporate money often went under, while those in the service of the super rich and their private clubs continued working through one of the worst five-year periods in the history of the property market.

Hong Kong's Equal Limited, which specializes in European hardwood flooring and paneling, saw steady turnover in the lean years, and since the market revived has experienced about 20 percent growth, according to founder and director Philip Lau.

Designers say that in the world of high-end design, the real rich don't do recessions - they just redecorate. That way, they are already prepared to entertain and amaze when the economy booms again.

Having survived the worst of what global markets could throw at them, it's hard to faze Hong Kong's designers with predictions of a slowdown in the mainland economy, or with the specter of competition from Chinese rivals.

The late 1980s until the handover was the golden age of conspicuous excess, when many of Hong Kong's rich got hooked on designer everything, and they show no signs of being weaned off it.

``Our clients are looking to import a complete Italian kitchen or European furniture, not to buy tables and chairs made just over the border in Shenzhen,'' said Rudolf Leong, director of LCL Limited.

The company provides architecture, design and landscape services to clients prepared to splash out anywhere from HK$2 million to HK$10 million on products by B&B Italia or Flexform, considered the Rolls-Royces of interior furnishings.

This is the world of business by word of mouth, where a personal introduction counts for far more than the most creative advertising campaign. ``You follow the family tree to the next client,'' Leong said.

Another niche market that saw some in the industry through the lean years is the fickle but lucrative world of show flats. Top developers, such as Sun Hung Kai Properties and Cheung Kong, use them to dazzle the masses with an over-the-top spectacle that plays more on fantasies of opulence than on the day-to-day reality of living. Much like the film and fashion industry, designers who do show flats are only as hot as their last creation.

God help the designer who uses a piece of decor that just might exist somewhere else in Hong Kong.

Designers will stop at nothing to outdo themselves, scouring trade shows as far afield as Milan, Cologne and Tokyo for something unimpeachably unique.

To fill show flats at top properties like Sun Hung Kai's The Arch in West Kowloon, ``we've used tailor-made crystal lights from Italy and tailor-made wallpaper from England,'' Leong said.

LCL's most recent work, for Sino Land's Mount Beacon in Kowloon Tong, featured one of the only three pieces extant of a crystal ornament by Swarovski. And because Hong Kong property promotions are nothing if not incongruous, LCL had to round up authentic riding and hunting gear to suit the French chateau and English countryside motifs chosen for Sun Hung Kai's Noble Hill project in Sheung Shui.

At a more functional level, high-end designers have been pushing developers to customize flats by allowing buyers to choose from among a selection of floors, kitchens and the like. Designers hope to widen their wealthy client base that way.

Cheung Kong gave it a trial run with its Beacon Hill property in Kowloon Tong, where buyers could choose from among four types of flooring or ceramic tile for houses costing up to HK$14,000 per square foot.

Hang Lung's The Harbourside also offered buyers a choice.

Most of Hong Kong's major developers, however, have been slow to take up the idea because they feel it increases the hassles of launching a new property.

Another boon to the industry is the shrinking lifespan of interior decor. Where in the past you could get away with 10 years of the same four walls, now it's down to four in a trend that has affected most areas of design, from cars to electronics. Not all designers working at the top end came out of the post-bubble years unscathed.

Some of the creme de la creme did follow the masses and cut back a bit here and there. This usually meant less travel, such that five-star hotels in particular, and the design firms that depend on them for business, felt the chill.

``We did suffer, particularly during the SARS year of 2003,'' LRF Designers Limited partner Ivan Dai acknowledged. The company focuses on decorating five-star hotels and counts chains such as the Four Seasons and Shangri-La Asia as regular clients.

One way out was to diversify away from Hong Kong and cater to the rich across Asia. LRF has developed work in pretty much every country in the region and even cracked the notoriously insular Japanese market, working on projects in Osaka and Nagoya.

Of course, for Hong Kong designers, the China market always beckons.

Many have done work for the nouveau riche, but more surprisingly other clients have included members of the Politburo and their families.

Some who have worked in Beijing say the capital's drab, grey exterior walls can be deceiving. Behind them may lurk veritable palaces, complete with subterranean swimming pools and plush karaoke rooms.

Inevitably, a slower Chinese economy and the emergence of mainland competition will present challenges.

But Hong Kong designers plan to keep doing what they're best at and what has always seen them through in the past.

``It's a threat as they build up a name,'' said Equal's Lau of the competition. ``But we will always target the top-end clients who are less concerned with price and more with brand and quality.''