Ah… Another day, another clothes shop, another bloody scrum for the front door. Take a good look at the photo above. This picture is from the London opening of COS, a new clothes store from the people who brought you H&M. If you recognise yourself as one of the fashion sheep standing there waiting for the store to open? Shame on you! Big. Shame.
People. What’s happening to us?! It’s okay to want to look good or to want to own the latest must-have outfit. What is not okay, however, is to queue in front of a shop for hours and, come opening time, run through the narrow door with scant regard for life and limb snapping up everything n your path. Believe me, this way lies misery and madness.
This all started when Stella McCartney did her capsule collection for H&M. Scrums occurred, items were ripped from rails, clothes were bought up in seconds only to appear immediately after on ebay. It was ugly.
More recently, we’ve had the Stella McCartney collection for Target in Australia, the Victor &Rolf collection for H&M, the Giles Gold collection for New Look. All disappearing in hours, snapped up by women caught up in the red fug of shopping madness, to appear moments later on ebay (sometimes for less than the selling price, which I consider to be the very essence of madness).
So where is this all going to end? Madonna’s M range for H&M is out next week. The hype is already building. The same thing will happen. And God help us all when the Kate Moss’s collection for Topshop hits stores in May. I fully expect at least one person to be trampled to death.
So, before this happens ladies, I’m asking you nicely, in the interests of sanity and just plain old dignity: stop the madness. The clothes will be there tomorrow, and if they’re not, there are plenty of other clothes (you may have noticed, they just keep coming).
Besides, trampled to death at Topshop? So not the look of the season.
