Dive Brief:

• Amazon Fashion has launched a new women’s apparel brand, "Find," but for now it’s available only in Europe, according to an Amazon press release.

• The autumn/winter "Find" collection includes more fashion-forward pieces than is generally found among Amazon’s private label apparel offerings, including a red floral wrap dress, two-tone wide leg cropped jeans and a pair of hot pink sock boots. There are also staples, however, including a plaid trench coat, slogan tee and a range of denim.

• The brand launch is accompanied by Amazon Fashion’s first womenswear advertising campaign in the U.K., Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, according to the company.

Dive Insight:

This brand, which includes some 800 items along with Amazon’s first major fashion advertising effort, is the largest launch of an Amazon private label fashion brand to date, according to digital insights firm L2.

"We are passionate about fashion and design for people who feel the same," Find Director Glen George said in a statement. "We believe our customers have their own personal style and find is about celebrating that. We take inspiration from across the globe to deliver both key pieces and great basics our customers can wear their own way."

That sounds like a a nod to the collection’s fashion-forward style and its European focus. The move to bring more daring designs to Europe first makes sense for Amazon Fashion, which is making most of its inroads in apparel with basics, according to L2’s research. Starting last year, the e-commerce giant has been launching a series of private label clothing and accessories brands in various sub-categories, most recently in footwear. The company is also experimenting with various sales and delivery models, including a new apparel subscription service (currently in beta), called Prime Wardrobe.

Amazon's own labels complicate already-difficult choices for brands. Even when brands don’t officially distribute through Amazon, hundreds of their SKUs are available through third-party vendors on its Marketplace, according to the report. For example, there are more than 2,300 Amazon Marketplace listings for Tory Burch items, some with discounts as low as 71% off the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.

And while apparel makers can indeed take more control of their brands on the website when they sell directly through Amazon, they run the risk of Amazon evaluating their best sellers and basing its own Essentials items on their performance. Amazon Essentials accounted for 4% of its daily best sellers, up from zero a year ago. Its top-performing item was the "Men’s Cotton Pique Polo Shirt," markedly similar to Dockers’ "Men’s Short Sleeve Solid Poly Pique Polo Shirt" at half the price. "With Levi’s/Dockers owning the second highest share of Best Sellers in the Men’s clothing category, this suggests Amazon’s private label brands pose the greatest threat to the very brands that are top of the category today," notes L2.

"Amazon could be using Find to fill the vacuum of white space opportunities left by the lack of major contemporary brands," Cooper Smith, L2 research director, said in a blog post. "For example, Tory Burch, Rag & Bone, and Boden do not officially distribute on Amazon in either the US or the UK, leaving a wide opening for private label."