London Designers Race Ahead of the Fashion Calendar

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We live in a time of immediacy. A simple swipe-up on an iPhone can instantly cool a room as soon as drones above our heads can deliver a package. Seamless, Postmates, TaskRabbit: the world—and everything in its gory—has never been as accessible as much as it is desired. London, a city that constantly strives to balance creativity with innovation, has become immobilized this fashion week as the runway—in all its glitz and glamour—is made-to-order closer and soon than ever before.

It’s see now, buy now, the fashion concept put forward by Christopher Bailey when he first reconstituted the fashion schedule (Burberry, the fashion house that which he helms, now shows on a same-season basis), which later distilled to the likes of Tom Ford to Ralph Lauren and even Moschino.

While the model has its own long list of flaws, it too has changed. Never has the “now” been sooner than it is in London today, where designers have challenged and increased this speed, leading us the public wondering hungrily of what we can get and how soon we can get it.

Of course, Bailey’s September 2017 collection for Burberry set the stages for the week on Saturday, where collaged knits and re-livened check trenches were just as ready for rain as they were to order—the entire collection became available online afterward on the British brand’s website. That same day, Nicola Formichetti’s design outfit, Nicopanda, showed its first London runway outing after a two-season run in New York. The collection that showed—a sporty take on uniforms from puberty (the jock, the goth, the mini-graduation gown?)—was marked by an Amazon sponsorship, who championed its own slogan: “see now, prime now.” Orders placed after the finale would arrive to customers in the city within an hour of check out, beating many of the show’s own attendees back to their homes.

Another American in Paris, Tommy Hilfiger’s Fall 2017 spectacular today homaged the designer’s love of rock and grunge styles of the ’90s. The red, white, and blue runway was a mega, three-part show that featured the latest installment of Hilfiger’s collaboration with Gigi Hadid. By nature, each piece is already available on the brands website. Add to that, Topshop’s ready-for-cart September 2017 line and Adidas’ Streets of EQT collection—a 90s-era range of styles created in collaboration with Hailey Baldwin—and the fashion season is not just within arm’s reach; it’s folded, papered, and packaged to go, coolly sitting in a shopping bag, awaiting to be taken home.

Fashion in this new kind of way pulls everything into consideration, from material quality to actual impact. Should it be so fast? Should it be so easy? Separate from say a delivered meal or an outsourced task, the stakes are far greater when dealing with matters of creativity and on this scale. What will happen in Milan? Paris? For now we can only wait, droopy-eyed and hovering over our keyboards in anticipation.

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createdAt:Tue, 19 Sep 2017 17:31:47 +0000
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