Amazon Will Now Let You Try on Clothes Before You Buy Them
This is huge.
• Amazon quietly announced Prime Wardrobe, a service that lets you try on clothes before buying them.
• With Prime Wardrobe, you have a week to decide what to keep and what to send back, and you get discounts based on how many items you keep.
• It's a competitor to companies like Stitch Fix and Trunk Club, but foregoes the stylists and lets you just select the clothes you want.
Shopping online for clothes is addictive and fun—until you get the actual box and realize that shirt you loved looks all wrong on you. But now, one of the biggest retailers in America is trying to fix that. CNBC reports that Amazon is now testing Prime Wardrobe, a service that lets you try on clothes before you buy them.
Eventually, all Amazon Prime members will be eligible for the service. You just have to look out for the "Prime Wardrobe" icon when you're shopping for clothes on Amazon. The company says the program will include more than one million items from its in-house brands plus labels like Calvin Klein, Adidas, and Levi's. Once you get your box delivered, you have seven days to decide what you want to keep and what you want to send back. If you keep three or four items, you get 10% off, and if you keep five or more, you get 20% off. And the box contains a prepaid label so you can send it back once you have decided. Shipping and returns are free.
Prime Wardrobe will compete with companies like Stitch Fix or Trunk Club, which send boxes of clothes for you to try before purchasing. But Amazon's difference is it lets you pick which individual items you want shipped to you—no stylist in the middle. So it's good if you're extremely picky or know exactly what you want, but bad if you want general style advice or want to branch out a little.
Amazon made the announcement pretty quietly, TechCrunch notes, without any official press release, but with a video explaining the service. There's now a link on their website that explains more, and you can sign up to be notified when Prime Wardrobe gets started.
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Megan Friedman is the former managing editor of the Newsroom at Hearst. She's worked at NBC and Time, and is a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.