The classic e‑commerce product page (flat images, rigid sizing charts, templated copy) was never a natural home for something as tactile, social and identity‑laden as clothing. It is an interface built for certainty, applied to an industry built on nuance; now live shopping is the market that aims to address this mismatch.
I view this change as a potential infrastructure shift, not just a clever gimmick. This is why live shopping giant Whatnot 's rise matters to Western fashion right now; not simply because “live shopping is growing” (it is), but because it reveals what the next product page, the next returns strategy, and the next “store” might actually look like.
As Grant LaFontaine, co‑founder ⁘ CEO of Whatnot states, “live shopping is no longer the future of retail. It's the present.” At a Whatnot live shopping briefing I attended in London, Whatnot's UK General Manager, Daniel Fisher, used an analogy that resonated because it so clearly captured what fashion has been trying to recreate since the first “add to basket” button: the feeling of being known in a store.
“It's really about bringing the best of an in-store experience directly to your phone. If you were to head to Soho right now, and walk into a boutique… Imagine that boutique owner closing the store for you, and you're there with 50 of your friends.” This frames the store as a relationship , rather than just a square footage metric.
This is the part many brands misunderstand when they test livestream shopping like it is a seasonal campaign format. They treat it as a channel, but live shopping acts more like a service layer : it collapses the distance between discovery, education and transaction. For fashion, this is a big deal because the most expensive problems in the category (anxiety around fit, authenticity, trust, styling confidence) are all communication problems, rather than inventory problems.
A good host is effectively a human “UX layer”: answering questions in real time, showing fabric movement, narrating fit, giving context, building social proof in public. This transforms the live chat from just a comment section into the new fitting room. You might also find this interesting: Visit website
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