Dive Brief:

• Upscale Italian fashion retailer Salvatore Ferragamo is selling more than accessories and footwear on its U.S. website for the first time, according to multiple news reports. The brand added a ready-to-wear shoppable feature to its website on Tuesday.

• In a "shop the look" section featuring model Rose Gilroy, a fashion editorial-style slideshow features a series of moody photos of Gilroy in a bohemian West Village apartment, rich in dark wood and textured details, wearing items from the fall/winter 2016 runway collection. Shoppers can add apparel items found in the photos to a virtual cart, giving them a see-now, buy-now experience.

• The layout moves smoothly to the online catalog and features suggestions for other items not found in the photos, which were styled by fashion consultants Meredith Melling and Valerie Macaulay of La Marque, according to the website.

Dive Insight:

As news outlets like Glossy and Luxury Daily point out, this online editorial spread on Ferragamo’s U.S. website is part of an accelerating movement in luxury fashion that has major brands making collections off the runway immediately available for purchase.

It’s also an assertive move toward e-commerce, an area that many upscale fashion retailers have avoided for a number of reasons. Luxury retailers are behind in technology and have security concerns when it comes to shipping because of the high-dollar value of their goods. They also often have much less inventory of any one release, and that small amount could be scattered at stores or warehouses worldwide. 

Luxury customers also expect their items to arrive in premium, carefully prepared packages. And when it comes to clothing, manufacturing cannot be rushed the way it is with lower-quality fast fashion. All of this requires specialized logistics.

Luxury brands have been slow to sell online (with the exception of accessories and perfume), but they haven’t resisted marketing online, especially on social media. That makes sense: Luxury has always made editorial content a priority. Photography and text in print has long been a way for high-end brands to do much more than show a product — but actually create an ethos and tell a story. That’s been a strong suit of upscale fashion, and making a highly styled story shoppable online is a natural extension of that.

It’s about emotion and a sense of exclusivity, Chris Paradysz, founder and CEO of digital marketing agency PMX Agency, told Retail Dive earlier this year. While we can expect more luxury brands to embrace e-commerce, Paradysz said stores will continue to be of premium importance for upscale fashion. “That’s the digital enabler, including the store side, it’s impossible to separate,” he said. “But you can still make it exclusive, you can still curate that experience. It can be a luxurious, exclusive experience.”