Are people truly getting sick of being told what to wear by the algorithm? A search for delight!
Many news reports have highlighted a growing disenchantment with the state of e-commerce. (Vogue Business here and Forbes here) It’s just too hard to find things we might like among the many, many options. This dissatisfaction has, amongst other things, led many people to do most of their shopping based on their social media recommendations, either that/those algorithm(s) or the influencers they follow.
It’s hard, though, to have the algorithm layered on top of your favorite influencers. Some of the ones you might like the most, whose style really fits your vibe or price point, get hidden way at the end of your stories or never make it to your feed. The point of the algorithm is to reduce search friction, not increase it. The Forbes article I mentioned makes some useful parallels to the news industry, which suffers from the same Voice/Feed tension between media brands and social media feeds.
With the demise of fashion media, too early to say RIP Vogue and Elle??, lovers of the high art of fashion, lovers of getting dressed, lovers of not being naked at the office every day, lovers of white-wine and emotional-despair driven late night Instagram shopping, whatever drives your need to consume, the fashion lovers need a new set of solutions.
And this new set of solutions cannot be a reversion to the mean, a completely algorithmically driven solution to shopping. The algorithm is not Fashion; it is selling. E-commerce teams are driven by the desire to convert rather than to delight. But Fashion is there for delight. Sadly, many of the start-ups I’ve seen are driving towards this e-commerce goal: conversions at any cost. I’d like to hope, and perhaps I am naive, that there’s a solution that delights consumers but also drives sales. That drives brand affinity, repeat purchases, lower returns, and customer retention.
How do we introduce delight? In my ideal world, the future of fashion browsing online (not to be confused with the utter joy that once was shopping online but which really can’t be repeated now) would include:
Give voice to the best thinkers in fashion (I’m looking at, amongst others, Laura Reilly and Leandra Medine)
Give those thinkers a solution for including secondhand at scale. What good is that link to last year’s The Row dress if it only comes in an XS (as I am not an XS)?
Uses data to predict if this item will work for you, fit, fabric, and price-wise
Uses GenAI to help you visualize in a meaningful way - how is this styled, how does it layer, what is the item LIKE?
Offers users control. How much do you want to regress to the mean? Some people want to have what everyone else has. That is a normal human desire. And some want to have it first and some want never to have what everyone else has. How do we build that into this feed?
As everyone lauds the innovations in AI and how they’ll revolutionize the fashion world (see this article here about Norma Kamali training AI to work off her creativity when she steps down or the buzz over AI at NRF this year), I’m waiting for the real excitement to hit my thumb - a place where “the algorithm” is a gentle hand, like the greatest personal-shopper in the world.
So, for those of you in this space, if you see any companies you think are adding delight into the e-comm experience, please send them my way. I’d love to be a part of this revolution.
And if you want to follow my research into this revolution…