Amazon stirs up fashion with The Drop

One of the world’s largest tech companies, Amazon is known for its retail success across many different industries – but fashion has never really been one of them. Most of the e-commerce giant’s fashion options to date, although vast, have focused on the basics and are relatively unexciting.

However, Amazon is constantly working to find innovative ways to explore new frontiers and break into new markets. With the fashion industry so strongly influenced by public figures, especially on social media, the company saw this as an opportunity to find success by launching a new fashion shopping experience: The Drop.

Announced on May 22, 2019, The Drop is a programme described as providing “exclusive access to limited-edition fashion collections designed by influencers” – a collective of “international trendsetters” who will release exclusive collections on The Drop, thus “turning your favourite curators into creators”.

Amazon has realised that current trends move extremely fast and addresses this by creating a platform to keep up with the fast pace of fashion. Uniquely, the collections are only available for 30 hours – or until the fabrics run out.

The company also understands that fashion is moving towards sustainability, so in an effort to reduce waste, Amazon produces each style on-demand and figures out the totals after the 30-hour window has closed. Although The Drop highlights limited-edition styles, it will also have staple pieces that will always be available – basics that you can pair with just about anything.

The Drop’s first collection, uhh, dropped (see what we did there?) on June 5, courtesy of fashion blogger and stylist Paola Alberdi; among the other influencer-designers announced so far are Sierra Furtado, Patricia Bright, Emi Suzuki and Leonie Hanne.

All these women have more than a million Instagram followers apiece, and each has a unique and desirable style. The Drop will release new collections every few weeks and will style the clothes alongside its staples. 

Make sure you don’t miss the next 30-hour drop by signing up for text alerts on the website!