Amazon announced their fashion subscription box, Prime Wardrobe, last year. But today, it’s officially being rolled out to all their Prime Members as part of their Prime subscription, for free.
The idea is tried-and-true fashion subscription box fare, similar to how Stitch Fix or Trunk Club work. You can sift through thousands of items to fill your box with three or more items before it gets sent to your house in 4 to 6 business days. Try on the pieces for up to a week and then just ship them back with the prepaid return label you get in your box. Whatever you keep, you’ll then get charged for.
To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of subscription boxes. For someone who exclusively writes about digital purchases, it pains me to order clothing online, as a person with an atypical body type for most retailers. Though, Amazon’s foray into fashion has been promising, not just with their in-house offerings, but their push to carry more and more higher-end brands that traditional brick-and-mortar shops also supply. That means all my hatred for online shopping is more-or-less extinguished by the ease and expediency of Prime shipping, and the ability to just send shit back that I don’t want.
There’s a lot to be said about the psychology of what Amazon does to the everyday customer with monopolizing their shopping habits, but what Prime Wardrobe really does is allow customers to experience the convenience of on-demand delivery of brands you’d normally have to take a trip to the department store to try on.