MILAN — Flattened like a panini by the large crowd waiting to get into the Moschino show at the Palazzo Serbelloni on Thursday evening, I was reminded of the notorious Black Friday stampedes at Walmart.

“Can this possibly be worth it?” I thought. As the model Coco Rocha came through, fans screamed and advanced for a closer look, compressing strangers into positions more intimate than those shared by some spouses. I have no doubt that if a truly famous person had arrived, as the pop star Katy Perry did, almost an hour late last season, there would have been a fatality or two.

When we finally broke through and took our seats, the big-box store analogy made more sense: There were Moschino-branded Barbie dolls on the front-row seats, and hot-pink hand mirrors for hoi polloi.