See now, buy now? Radical

Major excitement among Milan’s fashion set – those with €850 to spare. The customisable leather and metal flower embellished straps that featured on Fendi’s catwalk on Thursday went on sale (limited edition of only 50) in the Milan store yesterday.

Brands have been talking about speeding up the fashion system for years. Earlier deadlines are proving tricky to crack in luxury manufacturing, however. Agnona, the Italian label making indulgently cosseting classics, recently abandoned its attempts to deliver collections into stores a week after presenting them to the media.

Some brands are managing to be nimble, however. Last Monday, Hill & Friends’ debut bag line launched on Net-A-Porter.com, less than 24 hours after its London Fashion Week presentation. Burberry, a pioneer, is offering monogrammed backpacks and selected outerwear from last week’s show, albeit via its runway made-to-order service on burberry.com. Meanwhile in Milan, Moschino’s Windex spray iPhone case, which debuted on the runway on Thursday, has already sold out.

Traditionalists may view the increasingly disposable approach to all fashion, even that which costs thousands, with dismay. Yet arguably, if everything is constantly available, notions about what is and isn’t, in fashion terms, obsolete, will break down. The way we dress will become less and less about trends, and more about individual style. Besides, now that customers can stream a fashion show live, the idea of waiting six months for it to arrive in shops – by which time everyone will be sick of seeing it on Olivia Palermo and Alexa Chung – seems increasingly quaint, and bad for business. See now, buy now isn’t the future. It, too, is now.