After more than 30 years on Madison Avenue, the retailer E. Braun & Company is packing up its $3,500 hand-embroidered tablecloths and $2,390 bedding sets and will defect in April for cheaper space on Park Avenue.

And it is not alone. New York's most elegant shopping corridor, the Gold Coast of Madison Avenue, from 57th Street to 72nd Street, is pockmarked with vacancies as retailers flee sky-high rents. More than two dozen retail spaces are on the market and are either empty now or about to be. Windows that once showcased hand-tooled leather suitcases are now plastered with for-rent signs. "This is as bad as I've ever seen it," said Alan Victor, a broker who has worked the street for more than four decades and who is an executive vice president of the Lansco Corporation.

Another broker, Gene P. Spiegelman, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield, said that 13 percent of the retail spaces on Madison Avenue were available either as a direct lease or a sublet. Not included are those with tenants who would move if the right offer turned up. "There are tenants that say, 'If you get me a good sublease, I'll take it and run,'" said E. William Judson, a broker who is also the chairman of the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District, a group made up of property owners and retailers. "Some people are thinking, 'Maybe I'll either downsize or I'll close the store.' If they have a lousy day, they say, 'Let's get out of here.' If they have a good day, they say, 'Let's stay.'"

Lately, the people who sell $2,400 leather bags and $1,600 satin-and-rhinestone evening sandals are more likely to have bad days. Of all retail chain categories, luxury stores had the greatest decline in sales in 2008, falling 7.5 percent from 2007, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group. From 2004 to 2007, by contrast, the luxury sector outperformed all other categories by a wide margin.