Amazon Couture: Jeff Bezos Wants to Sell Fancy Clothes

For the first time, a menswear version of Fashion Week will come to New York this summer. Bulbs will flash as photographers hustle to document the best looks from the spectacle’s dapper attendees. Designer labels such as Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, and Rag & Bone will showcase their most creative garments on radiant catwalks. And plastered on it all will be the name of an unlikely retailer: Amazon. Three of the company's fashion sites—Amazon Fashion, East Dane, and MyHabit—will sponsor the event, the Council of Fashion Designers of America announced earlier this month.

Amazon has, in recent years, pushed to enter the world of designer fashion, selling clothing, shoes, handbags, and accessories from pricey brands with luxe reputations. Amazon reportedly also signed a multiyear deal last week to sponsor India Fashion Week, according to Women's Wear Daily. Over the past four years, the company has hired Barneys New York fashion director Julie Gilhart as an adviser, sponsored the 2012 Met Gala, and opened a 40,000-square-foot photography studio in Brooklyn. (The company plans to open an even bigger one in London.) And Amazon hosts events for students from such leading fashion schools as the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons the New School for Design.