beauty

The white blouse that sold out in 4 hours.

Usually it’s the big names that dominate desire in the fashion landscape – designers such as Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton, Prada. Or it’s the high street stores with their frenetic turnover and precision-placed guest designers.

[Think BalmainxH&M, the designer drop by fashion wunderkid, Olivier Rousteing, that landed in the fast fashion store this month and was sold out in a day.]

Images of women fighting each other for garments and crowds storming stores pushing over racks and each other for their piece of designer at high-street prices invaded inboxes. As if we would…Oh, how much is that Balmain knock-off dress?…It’s MINE! Mine I tell you!…

Watch the video below of Balmain X H&M opening. Post continues after video.

Creating desire, want, need in paying customers is at the heart of fashion; otherwise, we would still all be wearing grey acid-wash jeans from 1989. Nothing can kill that acid-wash. It’s like cockroaches and blue food colouring; they will be the survivers of nuclear war (we’re imagining a blue cockroach wearing acid wash jeans, which is not helpful at all).

Now word has spread across the internet of another sell-out. Another must-have. Another why-wasn't-it-mine? For a single item. Sold out in four hours. A white blouse. And at the centre of this white blouse (The Karina Blouse, $241), that looks like something Shakespeare might wear while he eats a turkey leg, is a label that not many of us have heard of; UK label Related.

Were there two blouses or 2000? Whatever the volume, the clever marketers have made sure their name shoots around the fashion cosmos...

They have also made sure that the Karina blouse will be back in store by December.

Click through the gallery below for fashion bloggers rocking blouses similar to the Related blouse that sold out...