So the Moschino and H&M fashion collaboration has finally been launched. But can everybody get hold of it?
Judging by my own experience the answer is no. I had to travel home from London to Palermo before the launch, but when November 8th arrived and I tried to buy something, I was told that in Italy the collection was only available in Milan and Rome – and that if I couldn’t get to either city then I would have to go online instead.
I thought this wasn’t good enough, but asked around for other people’s opinions. Roberto Mercurio, a 22-year-old woman also from Palermo, said, “I thought that I was able to find the collection here. But, as usual, this kind of stuff is available in big cities only. I never buy clothes online because I need to make sure that they fit me before buying them.”
But when I managed to find people to talk to who were happy to buy online, they were disappointed too. Apparently the H&M website was not working very well. This was because the collection was only available in selected stores, and because of the high demand the site kept breaking down, and by the time it was running again some of the clothes had sold out.
When I got back to the UK I found the same story. The collection could be found only in Birmingham, Manchester and in five stores in London: Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court, High Street Kensington, Regent Street and Westfield Stratford.
I read that people queued for 11 hours outside the Kensington shop – though at least they were given small bags with bottles of water and cakes in them!
I spoke to Julie, a shop assistant at Westfield Stratford, who told me that everything sold out there within ten minutes. “People were basically running to get everything…” she said. “Now everything is sold out… I wanted to buy a gift for my mom but there is literally nothing.”
Given that Moschino designer Jeremy Scott has said that the point of the collaboration was to be less exclusive and more popular, I think all or even just some of the collection should have been made available everywhere.
By neglecting the smaller cities Moschino will have done its brand no favours.
