One of Melbourne's best-known fashion designers has launched a scathing attack on Melbourne's retail landscape, describing store rents as ''exorbitant'' and likening the CBD to a ghost town.

In this month's issue of fashion industry magazine Ragtrader, embattled designer Bettina Liano, who has just opened her first international store in New York, said Melbourne's high city rents were emptying our fashion lanes of everything but ''tumbleweeds''. Liano said she has turned her back on Melbourne for the Big Apple where rents are more affordable and there are ''actual people''.

''What I was paying for the Little Collins Street store was exorbitant,'' she told Ragtrader. ''It cost me over $20,000 a month but this store in SoHo is less than $10,000 a month. And there are people here. In Little Collins Street, there's no traffic, it's tumbleweeds.''

Her comments coincide with the 2013 Melbourne Fashion Festival, designed to show off the city's fashion retailers and boost clothing sales. Festival director Graeme Lewsey was unavailable for comment on Wednesday. But, Liano defended her comments, saying New York provided ''better value for money'' than Melbourne where retail was ''dead''.