Talk to the messiahs of merchandising and they will tell you that the future of fashion is not shopping but experience. Designers are moving out of shops and creating branded hotels, bars, restaurants and spas where you can 'live la vida moda' 24 hours a day.
Donatella Versace is building a hotel chain. Dolce & Gabbana and Gianfranco Ferre want to pamper us in their spas. Gucci waiters serve cappuccino and espresso in branded cafes. Roberto Cavalli invites us to sip Negronis in his bars before dropping £5,000 on a patent, fox-fur trench coat. And Giorgio Armani wants to dance the night away with us in his clubs.
The epicentre of this lifestyle fashion revolution is Milan. Over the past 12 months, it has transformed itself from a weekend break destination into Planet Fashion. Land in this glitzy galaxy and you can live fashion 24 hours a day. At least that's what the marketing men say.
Are they right? Can man really live by fashion alone? It's an arduous task but someone's gotta do it ...
07:00 I wake up in the finest Frette sheets in the Bulgari Hotel. The Morning Bath Menu offers Bulgari green tea to drink and Bulgari Thé, Vert fragrances to bathe in, delivered in a Bulgari tea bag. It's a ridiculously good start.
08:00 Breakfast on Planet Fashion is coffee and a cigarette. With smoking now banned in Milan, the only place to breakfast ' alla Milanese ' is on the terrace of the Gucci cafe in the giant iron and glass-domed, mosaic-floored mall, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. A gran cappuccino and a Marlboro Red - Donatella Versace's favourite puff - later and it's time to boldly go ... to the Dolce & Gabbana barber's shop on Corso Venezia.
09:00 Head crimper Giuseppe wields the hot towels, glinting razor and scissors. He creates just the right 'contra pelo', Tom Ford-length designer stubble, then goes on to give me the latest tastefully dishevelled bed-head haircut.
10:00 New York might do breakfast at Tiffany's but Milan does brunch at Giorgio's. Upstairs in the Armani Collezioni store on Via Montenapoleone, Viviana Cremaschi serves cappuccino and panini as she measures private clients for their latest Sartoriale suit.
After choosing a two-buttoned, soft navy pin-stripe number, I cross the road to Gucci. There, Liana Laurenz takes my order for bespoke rib-weave, herringbone shirts. By the time I've picked up the latest Etro fragrances and chosen a Prada hoody, it's almost lunch-time. But where to eat? Mamma's Trattoria would never do on Planet Fashion. I need lunch with a logo.
12:00 At the end of Via Montenapoleone there is an area known locally as 'Armani-hood'. Giorgio Armani himself lives there, on Via Borgonuovo, and his giant Armani Superstore dominates Via Manzoni.
In the Armani Caffe the bresaola con insalatina de champigno is served on reassuringly logo-heavy Armani plates with Armani cutlery. After an espresso, it's time to do what every self-respecting fashion tourist does each afternoon; lie down in a darkened room.
15:00 A capsule door in the side wall of the Gianfranco Ferre store on Via Sant' Andrea leads to the designer's spa. A dip in the vitality pool, where I lie on an air cushion while fizzy hydrotherapy jets massage my back, prepares me for the real thing.
Ilaria, my private masseuse dressed top to toe in Gianfranco Ferre sportswear, leads me to a blacked-out treatment room. After 90 minutes of soft-spinal-aromatherapy-meets-sadomasochism I don't know whether to fall asleep with pleasure or pass out with pain. 'We call this treatment holistic firming massage with stone therapy,' Ilaria assures me. Call it what you like, Ilaria, I feel stoned.
17:30 Dodging the Japanese ram-raiders outside Prada, I make it to the latest must-be-seen-in shop in Milan. Which is not a shop at all. It's a bar. In a shop.
In the Just Cavalli store on Via della Spiga architect Italo Rota has built a pumpkin-shaped elevator which leads to a bar surrounded by an aquarium with 7,000 litres of sea water. Around it, models parade in Roberto Cavalli's latest studded, buttery suede jackets and soft-touch snake and crocodile-mix trousers. After half an hour, I need a reality check.
19:00 Around the corner back on Corso Venezia is a black-lacquered Dolce & Gabbana Martini bar, where raven-haired temptresses in D&G bespoke French maid's outfits dust the cocktail glasses. A swift gin restores the delicate chemical atmosphere on Planet Fashion.
20:00 Back at the Bulgari hotel, there is just enough time to sober up in the Turkish bath and have another green tea dip before supper.
22:00 The most fashionable restaurant in fashion's capital is part of its chicest shop. Corso Como 10, run by former Italian Vogue editor Carla Sozzani, is a boutique and a cafe which sells the most hard-to-find clothes and accessories and serves up the best risotto al salto in the city.
The black and white dining room is full of models and their agents - attracted not by the pasta but by the very un-Italian low-carb menu. The clock strikes midnight as the last espresso is drunk.
There is one more stop I need to make to complete my 24 hours on a fashion-only diet.
01:00 Below his Nobu sushi restaurant in Via Manzoni is Giorgio Armani's Privé - an invitation-only nightclub. Sig Armani, himself, is upstairs partying with Spanish actor and dancer Joaquín Cortés and friends, and his signature Armani Martinis are on the house. I dance the night away on the beige-carpeted - really - dance floor.
04:00 As I step out, the sun is coming up. I've done it. I've lived fashion for an entire day. The messiahs of merchandising are right. If designers can stitch suits, they can style suites, spas, restaurants, cafes, hotels and pretty much anything in between.
Fashion is going places. Call me ridiculous, but I am going along for the ride.
A life in labels
The fashion house has opened the Hotel Bulgari in Via Privata Fratelli Gabba. It can be booked through Exclusive Italy (0870 901 4020; www.exclusiveitaly.com), which offers a two-night package from £549 per person including breakfast and return scheduled flights.
Dolce & Gabbana has a barber shop at 15 Corso Venezia (00 39 02 7602 8485) so your hair and designer stubble can match your suit. There's also a black laquered Martini bar.
Beside the Gianfranco Ferre store at 15 Via Sant'Andrea is Espa, the designer's spa (00 39 02 7601 7526).
Even eating can be a designer experience at the Gucci cafe in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shopping centre, complete with terrace for people watching and smoking (now banned in restaurants).
Not to be outdone, Armani too has its cafe (complete with branded cutlery), part of the label's department store at 31 Via Manzoni. Giorgio also has a nightclub - Privé at 1 Via Pisoni - boasting a beige-carpeted dancefloor.
