Amazon has announced plans to open a clothes shop in Los Angeles later this year as part of its pivot into physical fashion.

The Amazon Style store will offer customers “a selection of women’s and men’s apparel, shoes, and accessories.”

It will stock familiar, as well as new and emerging designers and brands. There will still be an element of technology involved in the experience, however. Customers can use the Amazon shopping app to personalise their shopping trip, too.

They can use the app to send items to a fitting room, where they can use a touchscreen to browse more options. They can also request more sizes or styles that are delivered directly to their fitting room without them having to leave.

They can also scan an item’s QR code using the app to get more information on it or send it to a pickup counter. Machine learning algorithms recommend styles based on what the customer scans while they are browsing in the store. A palm recognition service, called Amazon One, will be introduced at the checkouts for convenience.

“Amazon Style combines Amazon’s love of fashion with innovative technology and world-class operations to help customers find looks they’ll love,” according to a blog post written by Amazon Style’s managing director Simoina Vasen.

Amazon Style is new and all about you

Our first-ever physical apparel store reimagines the shopping experience featuring advanced machine learning to make it easier than ever for you to find clothes you love. https://t.co/qDvizNDquA pic.twitter.com/j1CRJOXG2f

— Amazon (@amazon) January 20, 2022

Vasen claimed the idea behind the hi-tech store was to bring “more looks and less clutter to in-store shopping.”

“Personal styling used to be expensive and feel exclusive, but with Amazon Style’s sophisticated technology, unique store design, and thoughtful curation, we’ve made it easier than ever for customers to discover items they’ll look and feel great in,” Vasen wrote.

The browsing experience at the physical store will marry into Amazon’s existing online empire, as customers can keep shopping online after they leave the shop.

Items scanned at Amazon Style are saved in the Amazon shopping app, meaning customers can either revisit and purchase at a later time or find more items online from the new brands they have discovered in the store.

According to Vasen, the technologies used at Amazon Style will be similar to those used at the brand’s warehouses, or “fulfilment centres.”

Amazon is due to open a fulfilment centre in Dublin this spring. It has already announced plans to hire 500 people at it once it opens.

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