Does it still make sense to design clothes in seasons?

I find myself having to explain the idea of a pre-collection half a dozen times a season. Plenty of people don't really get them, both in the industry and out. “What does pre-fall really mean?” moaned a designer with an exasperated sigh, as he showed me his this week. I started to explain the nuts and bolts: that pre-fall is an interim season delivered to stores in about June, between the main drops of spring/summer and autumn/winter; that another counterpart, dubbed “resort”, started arriving in November. “No” the designer said with a sigh. “But what does that mean, clothes-wise? Coats?”

It's an interesting question, especially as we're grappling with the warmest December in 70 years in the UK and have been subjected to a remarkably mild winter across much of the northern hemisphere. That kind of climate affects fashion, obviously, and especially coats. (Last week H&M reported that November sales rose by four per cent: a rise, sure – but a third of the figure originally predicted, before the weather turned not-so-sour, and people decided they didn't need winter coats.)

So the importance of the pre-collections currently being unveiled by designers – who'll be showing them through January – can be traced, in part, to the weather at time of purchase. Most people pin the success of pre-collections down to the time period they sit on store floors for, at full price – a good three months longer than the main lines.

They're also, generally, slightly lower-priced and easier to wear. But thinking about the everyday environmental reality of these in-betweeny seasons has also affected the very structure of designers' composite garments. The mix for resort, now delivering before spring/summer, includes knitwear and soft tailoring – perfect for this remarkably mild, markedly unseasonable season.

Yet too many designers seem to be focusing on the mere logistics of delivery: Thakoon Panichgul, the Thai-American who shows under his first name only at New York, is restructuring his business round an approach dubbed “see-now, buy-now, wear-now”, which makes a muddle of the whole idea of seeing and ordering spring/summer clothes in September, and autumn/winter in February, both to wear six months later.

It's unconfirmed if Thakoon will present an A/W collection on the catwalk come February 2016, or if he'll hold out and show it later, when it can be bought straight away. But if he goes the conventional route, will he be showing winter coats, or something lighter? Are Thakoon and his ilk simply condensing the time between show and sale, or are they actually questioning what people want to buy – the weight, the whole notion of seasons? To coat or not to coat? That must be the question, because pre-collections are about much more than just delivery dates.