H&M Balmain fever hits London and the world

London - H&M x Balmain fever gripped London on Thursday, with shoppers eager to snap up a Balmain bargain that would otherwise be out of their budget.

When a pearly jacket dress costs 300 pounds, instead of 3000 pounds, one can understand the never-ending queues which snaked around Oxford Street causing early morning pedestrian madness. An embellished shift on sale for 190 pounds was certainly worth a 6 hour wait, if not the logo t-shirts for 25 pounds.

It is of no surprise, of course, that many items were already on eBay a few hours after the launch, although the original prices were nowhere to be seen with a general inflation of 300 percent affecting any re-saleable items that left the store. But not everybody has time to queue for fast fashion, and the prices were still a bargain compared to anything on sale in the Balmain boutique just up the road.

Outside H&M on Regent Street a police car was conspicuously parked on the pavement with officers attempting to calm the awaiting crowd. Some had started queuing outside the high street brand’s flagship store at 10pm on Wednesday in the hope of bagging a bargain.

Shopper Nilima Shah from London told a journalist she joined the queue of approximately 200 people at 5am on Thursday morning but only managed to purchase a ring. By the time she got inside the rails were empty: 'I waited that long and didn't get any clothes. All that was left was a ring!'

Balmain was H&M Regent Street's busiest collaboration

H&M’s annual collaborations, which sell a limited run of designer pieces at high street prices, have become well-known for attracting fervent shoppers, but the Balmain launch was the Regent Street store’s busiest yet.

But it wasn't just in London where the most anticipated collaboration of the year saw people queue from 10pm the night before. Shoppers in an H&M store in Turkey caused a frenzied riot as the doors to the store opened. Desperate to get their hands on the garments, shoppers were seen charging through the store in a manic and erratic fashion in videos posted on YouTube. Some made a dash straight for the rails to grab what they could, some ran off in different directions to snag a purchase - and others were left scrambling to scoop up what they could from the floor.

In Seoul, shoppers camped out in sleeping bags

In Seoul, South Korea, images of shoppers camping out in sleeping bags the night were a far cry from the images of the stampede of shoppers breaking through the doors at H&M in Florence, Italy.

Worldwide fever for the collaboration was evident at the end of the day on Thursday, when eBay was full of new listings from a host of different countries from those who were lucky enough to find the rails fully stocked upon arrival. Most stores had sold out just mere hours after the launch. The website too saw so much traffic it shut down just minutes after the online sale started.

In London the flagship became a fashion jungle minutes after opening

One anonymous shoppers told the Daily Mail of her in-store experience: 'It was a fashion jungle and I’ve never seen grown adults behave like it in my life.' It quickly descended into chaos within the first five minutes. Everyone was just grabbing anything and had huge piles of clothes in just about any size. They had actual people modeling the clothes instead of mannequins so people couldn’t rip them off."

Some things you can't put a price on.