“It’s not so much the flowing skirts that are changing the uniform,” said Stephanie Solomon, the fashion director of Bloomingdale’s. “It’s the clash of color and pattern combined with a splash of neon.”

Retailers seem to be responding to fantasy as deeply rooted as the Romany tribes. It is a realm, said Matt Salo of the Web site Gypsy Lore Society, in which “wishful thinking will transport them to some dreamland where they can be free, listening to violin music and being wooed by some tall, dark, handsome man.”

Inevitably, such visions call for a corrective, and that has been supplied to some degree by Gypsies themselves. In the book “Gypsy Boy,” a coming-of-age tale set in rural England, Mikey Walsh (a pseudonym) insists that English Gyspies are seldom poor, traveling about the countryside in shiny new vans, the women dressed in Gucci and Jimmy Choo.

Mr. Salo, whose site is intended in part to educate Gypsies about their heritage, recalls an older friend wringing his hands over compatriots who offer sensationalized glimpses into their lives for robust fees. “There will always be individuals,” he told Mr. Salo, “who will grab the money without thinking of the effect their fictions might have on the image of we Gypsies.”

Others see an upside. Angelina Roz, a London-based pop artist, thinks nothing of exploiting her background in a family of itinerant Russian Gypsy musicians to create her own fusion of Romany rock. “We are giving the world something positive,” she said, “something we as Gypsies need more people to hear about.”

In the past, younger Gypsies like Ms. Roz were largely ahistoric. But more recently, as Mr. Salo observed, they have shown increased interest in their roots. Oksana Marafioti, the author of “American Gypsy: A Memoir,” a reminiscence of growing up in Los Angeles with her family of Russian Gypsy musicians, suggested that a hobbled economy may be driving younger Gypsies to try to hold on to something solid. “We may not always have our jobs,” she said, “but our heritage is something we can always identify with.”