'I have nothing to wear' is something I say every day while standing in front of an overflowing wardrobe. Fashion's oldest lie is also fashion's oldest truth - we don’t need new clothes, shoes, or bags, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting them. (Do I need green faux croc leather kitten heels? No. Are they already in my cart? Obviously, yes).

Fashion has always been adept at this, but now, with Instagram and AI, desire creation is on steroids. It’s never been easier or cheaper to make your products look sexy and to get people to go from ‘who dis?’ to ‘gimme or worse: pp or price please’ in seconds. And while fashion has nailed this part of the buying journey, the second part, which is fulfilment of desire, is all kinds of broken. Especially for those one million small but beautiful fashion brands selling on their own websites. 

The only place you can fall in love with something and own it immediately is inside a retail store. Offline retail is immediate, tactile, and gratifying, but it's not available to everyone. E-commerce gave us infinite selection and then made us wait 5-7 business days to get the thing we want right now, before the rational brain kicks in and starts asking annoying questions like "but do you really need it", and "where exactly would you wear these red harem pants (and also who broke you?)." Quick fashion commerce is an idea that attempts to solve both availability and immediacy simultaneously. 

So who will get it right? 

Zilo, founded by former Myntra and Flipkart executives, has invested heavily in making its app feel like a fashion experience rather than a logistics one. Tight curation, established brands along with interesting indie brands, a stylist's sensibility, and the home trial model, which seems to have become table stakes now for these brands to minimise returns.

Zilo seems to have understood something important: they are not just delivering clothes. They are delivering the store experience in 60 minutes. Desire created, desire fulfilled before the rational brain steps in. 

Snitch Quick, launched by D2C menswear brand Snitch, is playing a structurally different game to an audience that has historically been underserved and underestimated as a fashion shopper - Men. Snitch creates desire even before you open the app - through drop culture, social media, and a brand identity that's earned a devoted following among Gen Z men. Snitch’s success is unexpected and very meaningful because it creates a potential path forward for all those D2C brands that are great at creating desire but struggling with fulfilment. 

And then of course, there’s the giant - Myntra's M-Now. The approach there is less about reinventing the experience and more about removing the thing that was always broken: the wait. If anyone can operationalise instant fashion at scale, across sizes, cities, and the chaos of Indian logistics, it’s them. Whether M-Now becomes the future of Myntra or just a very ambitious side quest remains to be seen. 

Where will scale come from? 

A question the category is figuring out: what does scale actually look like here? Grocery Q-com scales through frequency, the same people buying every day and sometimes several times a day. Fashion doesn't work like that. You are not ordering a new outfit every Tuesday. 

The scale here will likely come from width, not frequency. More people are buying occasionally, but at a higher value. Which means assortment becomes everything. Sizes, colours, and enough variety to make sure that when desire strikes, something is waiting on the other side. 

But this is also why I think very different players can coexist (unlike grocery). A focused brand like Snitch, with a strong identity and underserved audience, can win alongside a multi-brand platform like Zilo that offers discovery. In fact, they already do. ZILO stocks Snitch. Fashion, as always, loves a good collaboration. 

But is this good for us? 

My take is that it’s actually not as bad for us as being able to access all kinds of junk food in 15 minutes or less. You’re unlikely to spiral into buying a new outfit every day, but people like me who are fashion victims are probably going to spend more (gulp). 

The optimistic take is that it might shift spending towards smaller, more interesting brands. The ones we fall in love with on Instagram, and abandon at checkout because delivery timelines felt like a long-distance relationship. 

Btw, if someone's made a t-shirt that says "I have nothing to wear" — I want it. And I want it now.

The author is co-founder, Early Partners.