Amazon has been striving for legitimacy in the fashion world for a minute now. It wants to become a one-stop shop for regular Joes the fashion conscious alike. It's branded its name all over New York Fashion Week: Men's. It was probably in contention to acquire Net-a-Porter a few months back and it's working with Vogue and the CFDA around original fashion programming too. In its quest to build up the Amazon Fashion fashion, it's even been working to bring in some high-end brands to bolster that image. But, according to Buzzfeed, if that doesn't work out, Amazon might just say "fuck it" and start making its own clothes.
This strategy was put forth by Jeff Yurcisin, vice president of clothing at Amazon Fashion at WWD's Apparel and Retail CEO summit yesterday. He said, "When we see gaps, when certain brands have actually decided for their own reasons not to sell with us, our customer still wants a product like that." If they can't get a brand to fill in those gaps, that's where Amazon-manufactured clothing might come into play.
Obviously, this would be a very interesting step if this were to actually happen. Even thought Amazon isn't the first outlet people think of when talking about online clothing shopping (you should absolutely check out East Dane), it could provide a useful chip in negotiations as the piece states. "If you don't want to sell your clothes on Amazon, we'll just make our own," essentially. The only other issue with that would be bringing in the proper design talent to make interesting and engaging clothes for Amazon, rather than sticking with the brands that shoppers already know. At least at face value, it feels like an Amazon-designed wardrobe wouldn't be too far from being dressed by Walmart, which would be a problem to solve as well. But just imagine if Amazon shelled out the guap to bring in a big name designer as creative director. Now that would most definitely shake shit up.
