Hard times tear holes along Madison Ave.

NEW YORK -- In the boutiques along Madison Avenue, you can buy rare jewelry, one-of-a kind couture and alligator handbags for which the waiting list is years long. The one thing in ample supply on this luxury shopping street — other than multi-zero price tags — is empty storefronts.

As in middle-income America, hard times are making their way along this city's most fashionable shopping street.

The availability rate among the fancy stores is 12%, according to commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield, double what it was two years ago. That's vacant stores plus stores that would happily move out if they got a good offer for the lease.

For tourists who stroll the street to window-shop or moneyed customers who actually come to buy, the vision is jarring. Empty stores sit next door to elaborate window displays.

For everyday New Yorkers, it's an uncomfortable reminder that this recession has crippled the source of the city's prosperity: Wall Street.

Missa Goehring, 27, a marketing manager for the career website Vault.com and Madison Avenue window-shopper, was so struck by the sight of shuttered shops that last weekend she snapped photos of each one during her regular walk up the avenue and posted all 28 of them on her blog.

"At first I was saddened that the neighborhood was changing," she says. "Then I was mad I missed all the going-out-of-business sales."

The fashion gods still have their temples: Chanel, where a silver sequin and nylon handbag goes for $3,325; Dior, selling blouses for $1,085 and up; Valentino, where a green silk dress with rhinestones appliqués is $9,990; and Giorgio Armani, purveyor of a $14,000 pair of earrings. Some are expanding: Hermes, the French leather goods company that turned a shade of orange into the color of money, is moving its menswear into a corner building that had housed the Italian clothier Luca Luca. A second locale for Ralph Lauren is underway across the street from his flagship.

But elsewhere on the street, the windows are empty, and "For Rent" signs loom large. Petrou, an evening-wear retailer, is gone from its shop next to Gucci. So are Allegra Hicks, a British designer, Italian clothier Alessandro dell'Acqua and Oilily, a Dutch children's clothing shop.