Would you buy a £13k dress from Amazon?
As the UK site starts selling designer brands, Laura Craik asks whether it can persuade us to buy high fashion alongside everyday items
Like all bad habits, an Amazon one is hard to break. I wouldn’t say I depend on it, but it has definitely saved my sanity many a time. Lastminute birthday presents. Emergency nit shampoo. A clear plastic pencil case for a GCSE exam the following day. Thanks to Amazon Prime (and no, this assuredly isn’t #sponsoredcontent), these disparate items can be delivered to my doorstep while I carry on with the onerous business of working full-time while managing a house, two children and a dog.
While I’ve bought many random things from Amazon over the years, I have never bought a £13,000 ball gown. This is chiefly because Amazon hasn’t stocked one. Until now. Two years after launching in the US, Amazon Luxury Stores is now available in the UK, allowing users to add designer swag to their baskets. Brands which have so far signed up include Elie Saab, Peter Dundas, Altuzarra and Christopher Kane. Featuring clothes, shoes and accessories from current collections, all participating brands are responsible for their own pricing and stock selection, backed up by the site’s powerful selling tools and technology. Amazon says the concept combines an elevated shopping experience with the trust and convenience that customers have come to know and love, such as fast and free shipping.
This is incentive enough for me. I launch the Amazon app on my iphone, then decide that if I’m dropping three figures on an item, I should at least look at it on a big screen. So I go to my imac. The first thing that appears is a video of 50-something model of the moment Kristen Mcmenamy kissing a marble statue in the grounds of a stately home, a tableau presumably created to conjure up the idea of luxury. I click on “New Arrivals”. Up pops a grid of Elie Saab gowns, including a floor-length coral one described as a “bead-embroidered long dress”. The price? £13,600. A three-pack of Sellotape, this is not.
I search Christopher Kane, my favourite designer in the line-up. There are 130 items for sale, the cheapest a £98 T-shirt saying “Sinner”, the most expensive a two-tiered black chain dress priced at £2,295. I’m tempted by a floral midi dress, reduced from £1,495 to £1,047, a saving of 30 per cent. But it’s still out of my budget, although I do spy a pair of drawstring shorts in the same floral fabric. At £277, they’re among the cheapest items on the site, albeit still £268.01 more expensive than my last Amazon purchase. I double-click. Five images are brought up: one still-life shot, four shot on a model.
Unlike other high-end “etailers” such as Matches or Net-a-porter, there’s no video of the item being worn, nor is there an option to zoom in to study the fabric. Where those sites give fulsome elucidations and styling tips, Amazon’s listing comes with the basic description: “Christopher Kane Summer 22 psych floral shorts”. You’d get more detail if you were buying A4 envelopes or a phone charger.
Hesitantly, I add them to my basket, reminding myself that at least the shipping and returns are free. Wait, what? The “fast and free” shipping promise isn’t quite as it seems: it’s free if you don’t mind waiting four to six days for delivery, but that’s not what most shoppers would call “fast”. If I want the item the following day, I have to pay £14.95 for the privilege, a fee that dwarfs Matches’ £8 next-day delivery charge, and is even more expensive than Net-a-porter’s £12 same-day delivery option. For an extra £3.05, I could avail myself of Matches’ 90-minute delivery service – better value for the shopper in a rush, albeit a service only available in London.
For £14.95 I buy the privilege, security and reliability of my item being delivered by a courier requiring a signature, but I would hope that even the “fast and free” delivery would be similarly reliable. Too many horror stories have surfaced recently of Amazon packages being left on doorsteps, only to be pilfered. Bad enough if your holiday read is stolen: cataclysmic if it’s your £2,000 dress.
On the plus side, my shorts come promptly at 8.30am the following day, delivered by DPD. They arrive without ceremony in a municipal brown package that some users might find a let-down if they’re used to the lavish boxes, ribbons and surfeit of tissue paper employed by most luxury retailers. It doesn’t bother me, and is clearly more environmentally friendly, although if I was spending £5,000 on a beaded Elie Saab cocktail dress, I’d expect it to arrive in a box. And I’m sure it would, to be fair.
The shorts don’t suit me, so I pop them back in their package and complete that all-too-familiar Amazon returns process. Nothing about it is different from returning an electric toothbrush. I’m asked my reason for returning, and am offered a choice between Hermes or Royal Mail. I choose Royal Mail and, having opted for “paperless”, duly present the barcode Amazon has sent me at the post office counter. On the basis that everything I’ve ever returned to Amazon has been received and refunded without issue, I’m not worried about getting my £277 back. Amazon is unquestionably faster and more reliable with its refunds than many high street retailers.
Bottom line? If you’re not a snob, Amazon Luxury is as decent a way to shop designer brands as any, but this service needs finessing. Free next-day delivery should be offered to Prime members. Bezos can afford it and, as a billionaire himself, he should know that those wealthy enough to casually drop four figures on a dress won’t want to wait four to six days to acquire it.
It should also differentiate the “luxury” part of the site from its unwieldy, prosaic counterpart, by using more sophisticated graphics and a wider range of photographs. At present, the user experience is no different from ordering a tumble-dryer door hinge, the listings bereft of the sort of style advice that more cautious shoppers might appreciate. Given that Amazon has been trying to break into the luxury market for 10 years (in 2015, there were reports that it was considering buying Net-a-porter: it has also sponsored the Met Gala and trialled a personal shopping service), I’m surprised its offer is so weak.
Crucially, there aren’t nearly enough big names on board yet for Amazon Luxury to be regarded as a serious fashion player. Will more sign up? That remains to be seen. The site won’t damage their brands, but nor will it burnish them. Younger customers accustomed to buying high-end fashion on platforms like Depop and Instagram won’t baulk at the shopping experience, but older shoppers might be more cautious and snobbish.
Luxury brands are notoriously skittish about e-commerce: Chanel still doesn’t sell its clothes or handbags online, believing only a Chanel store can offer the high levels of service that its customers deserve. Most luxury brands were extremely slow to embrace e-commerce because of the lack of control they had over the user experience. Luxury has to feel and be perceived as luxurious: how else to justify its price tag? Those brands yet to sign up have patently decided that it’s more H&M than Harrods. Or rather, more Amazon than Glamazon.
The user experience is no different from ordering a tumbledryer door hinge