Fashion Week in New York showcases the usual cast of men’s fashion characters: Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren to name a few. But prominently featured throughout the show with bright and obvious signage is a new player to the fashion market: Amazon. Three of the company’s fashion sites, Amazon Fashion, East Dane, and MyHabit, will sponsor the event.
In recent years, Amazon has in fact been involved in the world of fashion by selling high-end clothing, shoes and accessories. Most recently, Amazon has hired the Barneys New York fashion director Julie Gilhart as an adviser to their growing fashion interests. Also, they have purchased a 40,000 square foot photography studio in Brooklyn with plans to open an even larger studio in London. It would seem obvious that they are on the brink of stepping into the world of fashion in a big way.
Amazon Fashion has a growing following of shoppers who have come to rely on them for upscale designer products at a price that is not so sky high. This has enabled more fashion products to be put in the hands of everyday people thereby not ensuring that only the famous can wear high fashion.
Also recently hired are former Vogue editor, Caroline Palmer, to head up editorial duties at the site and fashion icon Andre Leon Talley as artistic director. Through the purchase of Zappos and Shopbop, Amazon was able to bring on board higher end fashion items.
Many do not believe that Amazon and fashion will be able to be successful. Amazon is all about convenience and often price whereas fashion is about taste and experience. It will be up to Amazon to change the way people look at and buy high fashion. In the 2013 book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, writer Brad Stone quotes Bezos as follows; “In order to be a two-hundred-billion-dollar company, we’ve got to learn how to sell clothes and food”. Amazon has already tackled the food purchase and delivery market and now is poised to move on to the fashion sector.
Whether Jeff Bezos will be successful with this new direction, one will have to wait and see. But judging from the huge success he has made of online shopping, he is probably going to figure it out.
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