Decoding Amazon's Fashion Ambitions

NEW YORK, United States — In 2012, Amazon debuted its first fashion advertisement. It was reminiscent of an American Vogue spread and featured a dolled up Chanel Iman in a taut, alert pose. Printed across her shins was the phrase “Smart is Beautiful,” a tagline still employed by the glossiest division of the e-commerce and cloud computing giant, which generated combined revenues of $107 billion in 2015. Over the past five years, Amazon has made a series of moves aimed at the fashion market that go far beyond print advertising. Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos has long seen a presence in the fashion industry as critical to the company’s long-term ambition to surpass $200 billion in sales. The announcement of Amazon Fashion Week Tokyo | Source: Amazon Over the same period, Amazon executives have spent countless hours meeting with designers and brands across the pricing spectrum, trying to convince them to sell their products through the site. Taking the Long View Amazon Lending

Software Is Reshaping Fashion's Back End | Fashion-Tech | BoF NEW YORK, United States — From e-commerce to social media, digital has revolutionised the consumer-facing front-end of fashion, reshaping sales and marketing. Yet, for years, the industry’s less glossy back-end systems — used to manage everything from production to excess inventory — have remained relatively untouched. “Brands and retailers have been focused on what’s sexy,” says Ronen Lazar, co-founder and chief executive of Inturn, which helps brands more easily unload unsold inventory to off-price retailers. And while new platforms can certainly offer advantages, “technology in general creates really serious demands on time, from managing data flows and storage to [sharpening] accuracy and flexibility,” he adds. “Everyone has been putting it off to the side.” Now, as more millennials and executives trained in other sectors join fashion companies, expectations are rising and brands and retailers are rethinking their back-end solutions. Related Articles:

High-tech fashion design: Manus and Machina in haute couture FORGET repetitive-strain injuries. The human hand is on its way to becoming a casualty of the digital revolution in another way. Who needs to tap when you can talk to your computing machine? The hand, which for millennia has been central to the creation of magnificent works of art and the objects with which we live, is being rejected in favour of computers, code and machines. "ManusxMachina: Fashion in the Age of Technology” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explores the extent to which this is taking place in couture. “Wedding Ensemble” (pictured), the show opener, would anywhere else be a show-stopper. Or so Prospero thought before reading the accompanying text. Mr Bolton calls his grouped displays “case studies”. Mr Bolton has a keen eye and acute judgment. Presented with a wardrobe by Ms van Herpen, a surrealist Cinderella would be overwhelmed with choices. The world seems permanently set to fast forward these days.

Desigual's Snapchat Filter Make-Up Looks Are The Most Talked About Thing From NYFW Instagram Whether you’re an avid fashion month follower, or you casually peruse the talking points as they filter onto the internet, you’ve probably seen the pictures — the most unexpected look of NYFW so far (it is only Day 2 after all, people) has got to be Desigual’s Snapchat filters. With the help of MAC make-up artists, models were sent down the runway at its SS17 show with the filters actually painted on their faces. So, instead of the filters being magically (or with the help of some kind of unfathomable augmented-reality technology) superimposed on their face, they were done with a normal make-up kit. Read: The celebrity Snapchats you need to follow Though it's unexpected from the Madrid-based brand, not known particularly for its tech-savviness or wit, it's fitting. There were also bees, deers and angels, and though the dog filter is a bit hashtag basic in real life, turns out it actually looks pretty great when painted onto your face.