fashion500.com, the Premier Internet Destination for Fashion and Luxury, Arrives on the Web.

NEW YORK, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ --

fashion500.com, the Internet's premier fashion and luxury retail website, today announced its widely anticipated public launch. Defined by elegance, functionality and technological innovation, the site offers consumers an unparalleled shopping experience for apparel, jewelry and accessories by leading designers.

Located at www.fashion500.com, the site features an international roster of today's hottest designers and a visual interface as uncompromising as the styles they create. The site combines the selection and convenience of e- commerce with the personal attention of boutique shopping, through a variety of value-added amenities, including soon-to-be-available personal shoppers.

Collections represented on the site include trendsetters such as Betsey Johnson and Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti, and established masters like Kieselstein-Cord and Fernando Sanchez, with new designers coming on board weekly in addition to the 16 launched today. (For a complete list of fashion500 designers, see below). Categories available include: evening, trend, classic, casual, intimates, accessories, and jewelry.

Each designer maintains an exclusive agreement with fashion500. Under this agreement, these designers are represented in no other solely-online shopping forum; in addition, fashion500.com builds and maintains these designers' individual independent e-commerce websites, and executes warehouse order fulfillment and back office administration for them. These independent sites will be launched in the coming weeks.

Ease and Elegance

fashion500.com was built with the idea that e-commerce must be client- driven in order to succeed. The site lets each user tailor the shopping experience to her or his specific needs, with navigation that is elegant, intelligent and easy-to-use, featuring richly detailed digital photography unsurpassed on the internet, with zoom, examine and rotate functionality.

Additional features of the site include:

-- a wardrobe feature where shoppers can mix and match items, and create ensembles from several designers' collections

-- online personal shoppers who will help customers accessorize, choose a gift, or find just the right outfit for a special occasion. Personal shoppers are coming soon, but appointments can be scheduled now.

-- an Examiner feature that greatly magnifies merchandise, allowing customers to closely inspect and appreciate fine details of fabric and workmanship.

-- coming soon, a search engine that offers more criteria than any other fashion site, so that customers won't need to spend extra time browsing if they know exactly what they are looking for.

Michael Bereck, Chairman and CEO of fashion500.com, said, "We've worked hard to make the fashion500 shopping experience simple and to provide the type of high quality experience that luxury shoppers would expect anywhere they go.

"Visitors have several options as to how they can explore the site: they can shop by categories, as in specialty stores, in areas such as men's, women's, jewelry and accessories; or they can visit individual shop-in-shops for each of the designers we feature. Soon, visitors will be able to take advantage of our sophisticated search technology, and our editorial staff's expertise, by browsing looks they've put together from each season's most promising collections. We will also be adding numerous other exciting features as we move forward, as well as the collections of several other top designers."

The Most Exclusive Collections

In order to join fashion500's roster, designers must maintain a presence at such preeminent luxury retailers as Saks Fifth Avenue, Nieman-Marcus or Bergdorf-Goodman specialty stores.

The designers whose collections are currently represented on the site include: Burma Bibas, Barry Bricken, Temple St. Clair-Carr, Betsey Johnson, Kieselstein-Cord, Alexandra Lind, Manfredi, Mary McFadden, Kevin O'Brien, Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti, Angel Sanchez, Fernando Sanchez, Vicky Tiel, To Boot New York, Carmen Marc Valvo, White + Warren.

Founded in 1998, fashion500.com is positioned to be a leader in the worldwide branded, upscale and luxury goods industries, providing end-to-end business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce solutions. To date, the company has focused on apparel, accessories and fashion jewelry, but is also in the process of expanding its focus to include beauty, designer home collections and other branded, upscale and luxury lifestyle product and service industries. The company has recently registered the fashion500.tv domain name and is in discussions to produce a fashion lifestyle TV show and other content related to its website.