The trend to vend

The vending machine has come of age. Forget chocolate or cigarettes. Machines sell you iPods at US airports, books at Rio's subway stations and virtually anything from lingerie to eggs in Japan. You can even buy art from refurbished cigarette vending machines in the US.

Here in the UK we've been slow off the mark to exploit the instant gratification offered by coin- or card-operated machines. Now that's changing as London leads the way with luxury 24/7 vending.

Unlike Japan, where machines spit out life's basics (pot noodles, disposable cameras, umbrellas), Londoners want glamour and fun from their automats. We equate vending machines with the gorgeousness of vintage jukeboxes. And we want them to dispense goodies as seductive as hot Sixties hits.

Taking up residence in St Martin's Lane hotel's lobby for London Fashion Week (and in situ until October 15) is a vending machine curated by Love magazine's editor-in-chief, Katie Grand, and stocked by Selfridges. Purchases include an Alexander Wang leather and sequin dress, a one-off pair of Rick Owens trainers, Mulberry purses, Dior nail varnish, Diptyque candles, Vivienne Westwood fragrance and Yves St Laurent Noir lipstick.

Earlier this year Zandra Rhodes's Teknovation machine had a temporary presence at Harvey Nichols offering leggings, dresses and T-shirts in her diffusion range, Z by Zandra Rhodes. You selected your size and paid by card. Over at Dover Street Market, meanwhile, you can slide £25 in crisp notes into a chic machine dispensing specially-designed Comme des Garçons T-shirts.

It's not only fashionistas getting their vending fix. Design fans visiting Tom Dixon's new retail shop-cum-creative lab at The Dock this month will find a vending machine selling Shoreditch-based designer Simon Hasan's boiled leather vases.

Boiled leather? Yes, it's medieval craft technique (mentioned by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales) that Hasan has adapted for contemporary use — in this case combining it with resin and steel to create rustic-looking vases.

Selling for £76 (short) or £112 (tall), they're displayed on circular shelves inside the machine. Having selected your favourite (there are variations in colour and form because each is hand-made) you buy a token at the desk, stick it in the slot and out it pops.

"A vending machine is probably the most impersonal way of purchasing something I can think of," says Hasan. "It's the automated end-point of global industry — an extreme form of distribution even for a conventional, mass-produced object." As a comment on hand-crafted work versus de-skilled, mass-production, you couldn't find a better example. "I like the contrasts and contradictions it throws up," says Hasan.

In creating a direct link between design, manufacture and retail, it also mirrors Tom Dixon's vision for The Dock.

Still, this is very much a commercial — not a conceptual — venture. "I funded the project myself so I really do hope to sell work from the machines," says Hasan.

The Dock is at 344 Ladbroke Grove, W10.