Higher-end retail sites give the new meaning of fast fashion

'Faster fulfilment' is the mantra, but it's solving a problem that doesn't exist

How fast is fast enough when it comes to clothes and gratification? How much do you really need that dress or bag or platform sandal?

I’ve been wondering this since last week, when Farfetch.com announced that it would now be delivering Gucci in 90 minutes in 10 major cities around the world. A customer can “place an order and almost before they have hung up the phone, somebody is knocking on their door with a beautiful bag!” the founder José Neves said with great fanfare when I called to ask about it.

I don’t often hear Simon & Garfunkel tunes playing in the back of my mind (unless I am in a Parisian subway and yet another busker is singing “The Boxer”), but now I can’t get the opening line of “The 59th Street Bridge Song” out of my head. “Slow down, you move too fast.” Yadda yadda yadda.

Farfetch, Net-a-Porter, Matchesfashion.com and other higher-end retail sites have been offering same-day service in world capitals and vacation destinations for a while now (and Matchesfashion offers 90-minute delivery in London), but the Gucci deal takes it to a whole new level. And while it is, for now, more of a niche offering than a rule, it’s easy to imagine it snowballing to other brands and platforms, as the Great Race for Retail Domination (and Survival) heats up, online and off.

“Faster fulfillment” is the mantra of the moment, a response by companies to what has been called the culture of impatience. But I can’t help wondering if at least when it comes to designer fashion — the clothes that define a particular moment in time and often filter down to shape the styles of every day — it’s solving a problem that doesn’t exist. And maybe creating a new one.

I understand that we live in a world where, as Mr. Neves pointed out, no one waits for cabs or groceries or tables in restaurants, where information is immediate and pictures go viral. I understand that the millennials and Gen Y-ers are (theoretically) the IWWIWWIWI generations—the “I want what I want when I want it” folks. Conventional wisdom goes that if retailers miss that moment of wanting, they miss the sale. I recognise that defying this seems like the classic behaviour of a Luddite. But along the way we have lost some perspective.

“Why should we lose face with Amazon?” Mr. Neves said when we were talking. But another question might be: Why should we assume Amazon controls this particular playing field? It may be time to call, well, time on this game of one-upmanship.

A handbag is not a bottle of milk for a baby. It’s not a staple. And it’s not necessarily a good idea to create a situation in which it is equated to one. It may not be sustainable, in any sense of the word.

Saturday was Earth Day, and in the run-up to the annual reminder of what climate change has wrought, fashion has been as active as always: Kering teamed up with Plug and Play and Fashion for Good, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America has joined forces with Lexus, both to support new businesses focused on responsible supply-chain innovation. But while the industry often equates greenness with materials and manufacturing and also tends to attribute landfill problems to fast fashion of the cheap and disposable kind, it should think about high-end consumption, too.

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