Fashion changes

It's fair to say that the world of fashion has changed more in the last ten years than in any preceding decade. Where once fashionistas waited for quarterly magazine special editions showing the new season's look, there is now much faster media information being disseminated and consumed electronically. And it's speeding up even more. Those with their finger on the ever-quickening pulse now don't even have to wait to get home and fire up the computing machine - smartphones mean that people can get their fashion fix while sitting in a coffee shop or even walking down the street.

Whole armies of bloggers cover each area of fashion - there are blogs devoted to the avante-garde, blogs for people who want to get the best deals on clothes, and blogs for the otaku-level obsessives about esoteric sartorial matters such as how to care for vintage denim.

The speed-up of information has also had an effect on the retailing of clothes. One hot item being featured in the cool blogs cane have the effect of thousands suddenly clamouring for that piece. It's a world away from when people read about an article in a magazine and hoped to see it in the shops next time they ventured in to town. Now the shop itself is a click away, and the actual purchase not much further on.

So where will all this end up? Strange to think that the clunky Boo.com of the late 90s once seemed modern. Will we one day be able to design our own trainers, have them built by a robot and delivered to the home within 24 hours? it's not unlikely. The future is here to stay, whatever.