The same returns policy for regular items applies to pre-ordered goods, but Freed hopes that digital clienteling through Farfetch’s personal styling and customer care teams can help avoid high returns, because “customers will have as much information about the items as possible and are able to make a decision about a purchase”.

Managing expectations must be a priority. Customer demand is a potential tripwire. “If they show a dress to 10,000 customers and 5,000 of them buy it, will they be able to immediately scale production? If they can’t deliver promptly and accurately to what was advertised, customers are going to be really unhappy. A lot will hinge on Farfetch’s ability and their partners to execute,” says Cohen of Columbia University.

Digital sampling

As the products for pre-order don’t yet exist, Farfetch worked with fashion tech company DressX to render digital pieces on its models and with Threedium to digitally

Fast fashion has gone from beloved to belittled in recent years as some consumers catch on to its eco impact. But despite the current popularity of picking on the business model, many in the consuming public still don’t quite understand what fast fashion is. Which means they can hardly be expected to adjust their shopping habits to avoid it, even if it is a trending m.o.

On Monday, on the heels of the United Nations’ latest — and bleak — report on the climate crisis and tweets from climate activist Greta Thunberg aimed squarely at fashion for its complicity, rising search queries on Google included: “is yesstyle fast fashion,” “is zara fast fashion,” “is h&m fast fashion” and “why is fast fashion bad.”

Certainly, it’s within reason to question whether Yesstyle, the e-commerce platform that’s relatively new to the U.S. and rounds up low-cost fashion from Asia, constitutes fast fashion.