New York Fashion Week kicks off this Thursday and out there in the Big Apple right now, the tussle among fashionistas for catwalk show tickets probably makes a rugby scrum look like a corps de ballet.

Nowhere outside of the royal courts of 19th century Europe do seating plans matter more. The closer you are to the front, the closer you are to God. Or, more accurately, to the designer’s celebrity muse, who increasingly wears their most bankable new design because she gets more publicity than the clothes ever do.

Fashion blogger Bryanboy’s Twitter stream is probably the best introduction to the Byzantine intrigues required to bag a front row place at a show. Yet what’s most interesting about all this is why it should still matter when these supposedly exclusive shows are all over the internet.

Burberry Menswear 2010

Luxury fashion brands like Gucci and Dior might be latecomers to the online table (and even they’ll probably only eat a cube of cheese), but their YouTube channels do something very clever. They increase the visibility of products most of us will never touch without making them feel cheap or overexposed. Online video is cheaper than 20 pages of ads in Vogue, reaches more people and extends the lifespan of what are monstrously expensive half hour junkets.

But more important than all of this – it’s not the same as being there. This kind of online promotion doesn’t replace the experience, it whets your appetite for the real thing, and pushes up the demand for catwalk show tickets up to feverish levels.

High fashion still has a lot to learn about doing business, but it can teach businesses a lot of things about desire. And desire is what makes people confuse want with need and reach for their credit cards.