Can Amazon Save Luxury Fashion?
For retail in America, the current prospect is dim. New data released by the Department of Commerce on Friday showed a staggering, record-breaking drop of 16.4 percent in April. But for clothing-and-accessories stores in particular, the details are even bleaker. The two-month decline for them stands at just over 89 percent. Luxury fashion is not the largest part of the clothing-and-apparel market — far from it — but luxury is hurting too. The high-end department stores are floundering (Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy this month; Barneys was sold for scrap last year); Net-a-Porter shut its warehouses and paused orders when the pandemic hit. Stores canceled orders or demanded new and impossible sales terms, leaving companies stuck with piles of produced but unsold merchandise and factory bills to pay without incoming revenue to pay them. If only there were a gigantic store-to-end-all-stores waiting in the wings to help. Wait just a minute — what’s that? Up in the sky, there. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Nah. It’s Bezos. Read more at The Cut.
