TESCO - which has recently opened a new store in Horwich - has vowed to keep fighting the ruling on selling cut-price designer goods.

Their plea comes in the wake of losing their landmark court battle with jeans-maker Levi's, which will prevent stores from selling designer label goods at "dream prices".

But Karen Marshall, a spokeswoman the stores, said: "We will continue to fight on and try to get the law changed to buy from anywhere and enable us to bring brands at lower prices."

Tesco shoppers are expected to be "as disappointed as we are" with the ruling, said Karen.

In the meantime, Tesco will "continue to offer big brands at value prices," she said.

"Your local store will continue to stock 'WIGIT' -- 'when it's gone it's gone' -- goods, but we can only get so much of them."

Had the court case gone Tesco's way, they would have been able to offer Levi's from America to Bolton shoppers at the "dream price" of £25, instead of the current £28, Karen explained.

"If we could get the volumes we know we could get the prices down," she said.

Designer labels have become a by-word for style since the 1980s when Chanel, Gucci and Hermes were the labels to be seen in.

And today's big names are often the ones that celebrities parade around in. Think Victoria Beckham and Gucci/Louis Vuitton and you can see the appeal of these labels to us, mere mortals.

But not everybody can afford the latest designer labels.

Tesco had tried to introduce cheaper branded clothing for their consumers, which they had bought from outside the EU, on the grey market.

While the superstore will continue to sell designer products at knockdown prices, the ruling will prevent the chain from reducing prices a further 10 per cent by buying items from America and outside Europe.

But will the ruling spell the end of the label craze or will it merely whet our appetite for the real thing?

Steve Bowker, owner of designer clothes' boutique Tribe on Bank Street said the exclusivity of the Levi's brand has been tarnished by the fact their goods are for sale in stores such as Tesco and Matalan.

"We don't consider it a designer brand," he said.

"But it highlights a problem where things are priced so differently in different countries."

He added the labels he sells in his store -- including Dolce & Gabanna and Versace -- are unlikely to go down the same route as Levi's and be offered for sale at supermarkets and superstores.

"I don't think it would ever happen because it's not the right environment for our type of products.

"It's very difficult to be everything to everybody.

"If they did go down that route, we would look for a different product, something exclusive is always around the corner."

Shelly Vella, fashion director of Cosmopolitan magazine, believes that the designer trend will never die out.

Clive Hallett, senior designer at the London Centre For Fashion Studies, agrees today's ruling will have little impact on the designer clothing market.

"The ruling would just make it harder for people to buy cheaper Levi's jeans.

"It certainly won't affect the rest of the designers because there will always be a market for them."

According to fashion experts, the roots of this designer craze began a long time ago.

Shelly Vella believes Mary Quant paved the way for today's label-obsessed consumers when she designed the mini-skirt in the swinging Sixties.

"Quant made the mini-skirt mainstream for the average person on the street - before that, labels such as Christian Dior and Chanel were only for the rich and famous," she said.

"In the Seventies, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans were the only jeans to be seen in."

It was in fact Vanderbilt who set the trend for designer jeans and even put Levi's in the shade, at the height of the flamboyant disco era.

Those skin-tight jeans complete with gold-stitched logo became the best-selling jeans in America by the early 1980s.

But early last year, designer fashion reached a plateau no one had ever seen before.

The subtle logos of the Nineties were replaced by blatant-embossed signatures, for example Louis Vuitton. These were seen on handbags, clothes and on every designer merchandise.

Vella is not impressed with this.

"This phase was completely farcical," she said.

"This heavily logo-ed name-tagging follows the ghetto-fabulous fashion trend and is tacky and cheap."

And Steve Bowker agrees.

He said the clothes bought by his customers have nothing to do with "logos" -- because people are more sophisticated than that.

"It's to do with style, a way of life," he said.

"Things have become very style-orientated.

"We are at a different end of the market." Labels through the decades THE EIGHTIES:

Label: Vivienne Westwood, Chanel, Armani, Katherine Hamnett

Worn by: Power dressers, exhibitionists

Celebrity fans: The then Lady Diana Spencer, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Madonna, any male Hollywood or Miami Vice star

THE NINETIES:

Label: Alexander McQueen, Versace, Gucci

Worn by: Girls about town, aspiring starlets

Celebrity fans: Liz Hurley, Meg Mathews, Spice Girls

THE NOUGHTIES:

Label: Julien Macdonald, Burberry, Stella McCartney

Worn by: See the nineties

Celebrity fans: Gwyneth Paltrow, Kelly Brook, Madonna, the Appleton sisters, Liam Gallagher. Liz Hurley - Famous for wearing designer dresses