Amazon is breaking into the fashion market – with great vigour

THE YOUNG woman turns to show off her ragingly trendy lace dress with seethrough panels.

It looks as if it was picked up in some chic boutique in the Marais district of Paris or on London’s King’s Road.

Yet the outfit is from a new brand by internet retail giant Amazon.

The website you, me and 285 million global shoppers use to buy books and toys, has set its sights on fashion.

This might be wonderful news for us, but bosses at every high street fashion retailer in the UK are quaking in their velvet ankle boots (an autumn must – yours from Amazon Find for just £49, or R850).

This is because once Amazon sets its sights on disrupting an industry, whether it’s books, movies – or most recently food, with its £10.7 billion acquisition of American food giant Whole Foods – it doesn’t do things by halves.

It has launched the new Find collection in the UK and Europe, with an initial 500 pieces aiming to provide both key basics and hero pieces.

Amazon has a huge technical advantage. On top of promising next-day delivery and free returns, it has information from hundreds of millions of customers, so it can easily discover what we want, what we will pay and where gaps in the market lie.

It is also scrupulous about analysing customer reviews so it can use this information to evolve the collection, adjusting fit, fabrics and styles, and making sure the right pieces arrive when we need them.

Not surprisingly Amazon has been accused of reducing fashion to a science.