"You can really get scorched in a world where the consumer has a lot less money to spend," said William McComb, CEO of Liz Claiborne Inc. "Ultimately, to become profitable again as an industry and to have sustainable margins, you've got to have some real level of scarcity."

Fashion got caught up in extraordinary consumer growth, expanding store bases and supply chains to meet shoppers' ever-increasing demand for more and more, risking a loss of market share if they didn't hit the accelerator.

"We're going to have fewer outlets over the next year, and it's going to happen much more quickly than if the business cycle hadn't screeched to a halt so fast," said Nancy Koehn, a retail historian and professor at the Harvard Business School.

As painful as that sounds, there could be a payoff at the end for consumers.

"The drama of this moment will force savvy retailers to figure out how to be more distinctive and more targeted," Koehn said. "We're going to end up with a more distinctive, and in some sense, more compelling shopping landscape."

She pointed to the fast-fashion model used so effectively by Hennes & Mauritz and Zara and said it could be re-engineered to suit a higher-end customer.

"This moment is a kind of great trumpet blowing for taking that idea, that rough concept and trying to add some [social] responsibility, some durability or lastingness to it," Koehn said. "People are looking for purchases that are going to last. It needs to be a few zippy things that people can actually think about acquiring."

Higher-end fast fashion based on a few key pieces? Just one possibility for fashion's future. Certainly others have heard the rallying call to quick-turn styles, including the designer Jil Sander, who, after sitting on fashion's sidelines for several years, recently inked a deal to oversee men's and women's apparel for Japanese retailer Uniqlo, owned by Fast Retailing Co. Ltd.

Fast fashion has caught on, in part, because of its clear usability for consumers. It's a business model that offers shoppers an accessible way to stay current. If consumers once again reign as kings and queens, this is the type of focused business model expected to take root.

From fewer stores to a renewed focus on what consumers are demanding, it is a scary and exciting time in fashion. Even if the industry's woes don't rise to the doomsday scenarios facing the financial sector and U.S. automakers, by most accounts, fashion is headed for a significant reinvention as consumers find their footing and the business adapts to structural changes.

The New, Pushier Consumer

Every aspect of retailing, from the number of stores to the looks they carry and the marketing they use to draw customers, could be permanently reordered as shoppers throw their weight around.

"Consumers are getting out of the habit of buying," said Popcorn, the futurist. "We're calling the consumers 'citizens' and a citizen wants to play deeply in the purchase cycle. They want to say, 'I want it this way or I want it that way. I want to put my logo on it. I want an Adidas logo on top of a Nike logo.'"

People are angry with their leaders, losing faith in big companies and scared about the economy, said Popcorn, noting that value brands are "no longer a sacrifice, just smart."

Last month, Stefano Sassi, Valentino's CEO, said consumers were beginning to take a "punitive" or "moral" approach to buying, meaning that price had to be relative to quality more than ever.

This is a challenge to the predominant mode of thinking that so often equates growth with success.

"If you're going to truly focus on your core customer, you are going to have to relook at your business and how big your business can be," said Andrew Sacks, president of marketing and intelligence firm Agencysacks. "The focus should be on being profitable and building a more consistent brand."

Sacks said the first step is acknowledging the business is changing and might be smaller and focused on a different range of products.

"If anyone's thinking about it already, then they're already ahead of the game," he said. "It's also about taking a view. If you're in the middle of the road, you know what happens. You're going to get run over."

Thinking smaller would be a clean break with much of the industry's recent past.

Brands will have to do more than edge out the competition—they will have to satisfy important needs of shoppers, said Paul Charron, former CEO and chairman of Liz Claiborne Inc., who is set to become chairman of Campbell Soup Co. in August.

"When I look at some of the things I did as a CEO, I think I did them for largely competitive reasons and they probably served me well," Charron said. "But I'm not sure that that's going to be sufficient going forward. The things that need to be done are going to have to work from a consumer point of view and they're going to have to enhance your stature with the consumer on a metric other than convenience, which is more accessibility, which is more stores."

Charron said each consumer segment would react in its own way to the economic tides.

"You've got about seven or eight consumer revolutions under way, and no trend observer or researcher or consumer behaviorist has a clue as to what the world will be like on the other side," he said.

The type of goods that go into stores and how they are presented to shoppers are also changing, and concepts such as "aspirational" are proving to be a moving target.

"The aspirational consumer is going to continue and maybe consumers will become even more aspirational," said Mackey McDonald, former chairman and CEO of VF Corp., who is no longer affiliated with the company. "What they will buy will be the things that will be important to their image and the statement they want to make about who they are."

Reaching the consumer will require more targeted marketing.

"I don't think it's a time when you can stop communicating," said McDonald. "I just think you need to be communicating with a high-powered rifle rather than a shotgun."