Best Fashion Shopping 2020

Every year fashion boutiques come and go. The leading stores from last year have new retailers nipping at their heels, and the fashion business has constant competition for the top spot in retail. In this section, we do not necessarily list the largest fashion retailers, but we list retailers that we believe are impressive for various reasons - and the retailers below are not listed in any particular order; they are all fabulous, and we are not going to tell you which is our absolute favorite.

The 2020 list holds four names in two kinds of shopping. Three are direct brands with founders at the center of their stories - two sisters in Australia, two friends making individual pieces instead of collections, and a designer who built an East-meets-West house from a hand-embroidered blouse. The fourth is not a store at all in the single sense: a marketplace that brought thousands of local boutiques online in one destination.

Verge Girl: Two Sisters Against the Department Store

Verge Girl was founded by Daniella and Natalia, two sisters who started their shop with the simple belief that girls wanted an alternative to common, overpriced department store looks. Verge Girl's little shop quickly became an essential hangout for cool girls who were looking for on-trend looks with a unique style.

That little shopping boutique has transformed into a large online shopping destination that ships signature looks all around the world. Verge Girl is a style-driven online destination - the arc from one hangout shop to global shipping is the whole story, and it is the direct-brand pattern at its clearest: a specific dissatisfaction, a specific customer, and a look she could not find elsewhere.

Realisation: Individual Pieces, Not Collections

Founded by Alexandra Spencer and Teale Talbot, Realisation is a concept that arose from the collective mindset of the inspiring women around them. The intertwining of their separate lives, friendships and creative careers led them to where they are now, and they have created a brand that represents the best of all women. The inspiration, as the founders put it, has always been right in front of them.

The working method is the distinctive part: by creating individual pieces rather than collections, Realisation seeks to provide those special items the founders felt were missing from their own wardrobes - and to put them into yours. In a shopping year dominated by drops and full seasonal ranges, a brand built one missing piece at a time is a genuinely different answer to the same wardrobe.

Natori: An Entrepreneur's East-Meets-West Brand

Born Josefina Almeda Cruz, the fashion designer behind the Natori designer brand credits her entrepreneurial nature to the matriarchal society she grew up in, along with the support of her close-knit Filipino family. 'Women are encouraged to be entrepreneurs,' says Natori of her home country, the Philippines. 'My grandmother always said, Don't put yourself in a position where you have to depend on anyone.'

It seemed like serendipity when the very place she grew up, the place that instilled her motivation to become an entrepreneur, was also the inspiration for what became a successful lingerie collection: a hand-embroidered Filipino blouse. Using an Asian aesthetic, Natori built a distinct brand, melding the visual appeals of both the East and the West - a founder story in which the product, the place and the philosophy all come from the same source.

Shoptiques, and Where to Go Next

Not just one boutique: Shoptiques is a way to shop from several fashion boutiques at once, bringing local boutique shopping online in one convenient destination for fashion, accessories, jewelry and more one-of-a-kind pieces. In the past, if you lived in Dallas and wanted to shop a small boutique in New York, LA or even Paris, you had to buy a plane ticket - they simply were not online, and if they were, there was no way to find them.

Shoptiques was founded in 2012 by Olga Vidisheva with just 25 boutiques on the platform; it now has thousands of stores on the site, under the motto Be Yourself, Be Different. You may also be interested in the best fashion shops from last year's consumer guide - visit best fashion shopping 2019, since many of last year's retailers are still fabulous. For marketplace shopping gathered into single guides, use the Apparel Search Amazon clothing guide and the eBay fashion guide, where the product links are kept in one place. Thank you for using the Apparel Search website.

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