Fashion Copywriting: How to Master It With Tips and Examples from Experts (2022)

In the world of eCommerce, the fashion industry is its own special beast. It’s fast-paced and ultra-competitive, and only getting more so every day. 

It makes sense when you consider the fact that the global fashion market is projected to grow almost 4% each year for the next few years - for a whopping 64 billion dollar industry by 2025.

Since the fashion industry is also strongly based on visual communication, fashion copywriting for any online fashion store assists marketing campaigns by producing content that communicates visual brand messages. Its main job is to create effective messages and product descriptions for various clothes and accessories brands. 

It goes without saying, then, that any brand’s fashion copywriting is pivotal to any hope of competing with the fashion giants - amidst an industry with some of the best eCommerce copywriting in the world.

Exciting, sensory, emotional branding is the minimum entry fee into this competitive ring - and for good reason. Great fashion copywriting can compel customers to spend thousands of euros on a pair of shoes. 

Want to jump in and snag your piece of the fashion pie? In this blog post we’ll lay it all out for you - the ins and outs of fashion copywriting, how to make your fashion copy shine, and key fashion copywriting examples and tips from the pros themselves.

Intrigued? Keep on reading.

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10 Fashion Copywriting Tips to Transform Your Copy Game (bonus tip at the end!)

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1. Define what makes your fashion product unique

There are millions of other fashion brands out there - all competing for your customers. What makes you different? Better? Why should customers buy from you rather than the next online store? 

Figure out your unique selling proposition for your fashion products, and build this language into your fashion copywriting. Tell your story! Who’s behind these products?

Make sure you’re setting your brand up for success with strong and consistent copy in your brand messaging. One way to do this is to create a unifying reference document that serves as a framework for your brand voice and style.

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2. Identify your ideal customer - then have a conversation with them

Who are you trying to sell your fashion products to? It better not be everyone.

If you set out to sell to everyone, you’ll end up selling to no one. Your copy will be too general, and visitors - even your core customers - won’t be able to envision themselves as the target audience of your copy.

Define a persona for your quintessential buyer, and determine what is most important to them. What are their priorities, lifestyle, and needs? 

Use their language, perspectives, and values in your fashion copywriting to address them directly and personally. 

Don’t be afraid to get emotional!

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3. Lead with benefits, not features

Bear with us for a moment here: your descriptions need to be more than descriptions.

It’ll make sense in a moment.

Product descriptions that merely describe your products to the customer will just fall flat. Beyond just appeasing the mighty Google search engine web-crawler, you need to appeal directly to the real people with actual heartbeats visiting your product pages.

Get down to the nitty-gritty of why customers should buy your fashion product. How does it address the current pain points in their closets? What can they achieve while wearing it? How will it make them look?

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4. Engage the senses and spark the imagination

A major bane of eCommerce - and fashion eCommerce in particular - is that online store visitors can’t touch and feel the products. 

Sure, it’s great for your visitors to know that your hand-knit sweater is a cashmere-polyester blend. But what does that mean for its wearing experience? How does the fabric feel to touch, and what is it like to put it on?

Perhaps customers will love the silky velvet touch of your pashmina scarf, or will feel radiant in your bridal dress. 

The use of sensory and emotional adjectives will go a long way towards building a full picture for your visitors - and help them truly imagine what it’s like to own and wear your product.

Adjectives you could add to your arsenal include: 

• Avant-garde
• Chic
• Edgy
• Iconic
• Preppy
• Timeless
• Vintage

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5. Stay up-to-date on trends

As we all know, the fashion world is highly seasonal. This means a lot of change and a dynamic tumult of styles and trends. 

To keep your fashion copy current and build your brand’s in-style credibility, make sure you are staying up-to-date and in the know on the latest fashion trends.  

You’ll be able to not only incorporate these changing styles into your new collections, you’ll be able to use evolving fashion and style language in your fashion copywriting - reproducible for multiple product categories. 

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6. Learn to love the lingo

To truly master fashion copywriting, of course it’s crucial to have command of the industry terminology. Using the right fashion terms at just the right time in your fashion product descriptions can give you that edge you need to complete the picture for the customer.

A few terms that may be useful for you:

• Art nouveau: an ornamental style characterized by linear and curvilinear patterns
• Bodycon: a tight fitting style that accentuates curves
• Du jour: French for “of the day” - meaning it’s hip and trendy
• Faux pas: a simple misstep or blunder that should be avoided, applicable to both social settings and fashion
• Geek chic: a style associated with technology professionals
• Haute couture: high brow, fashionable clothes made by the finest fashion houses
• High stepper: an everyday term for a person who is particularly fashion conscious
• Melange: a type of fashion that is a mixture of various styles, elements, or trends
• Ombre: a style in which the color palette fades gradually from light to dark‍
• Panache: a confident, sometimes flamboyant style

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7. Incorporate customer testimonials and reviews

It’s one thing for a dress to look perfect in a sterile studio background setting, but how does it flow and move on an actual human? It may not be enough to just ask your visitors to take your word for it.

This is where social validation comes in. For many visitors, community and social consensus build trust. Items that are popular will attract them more than items that are not. 

If visitors are hesitating on your fashion product page, still a little unsure, positive reviews and testimonials may be the last bit of persuasion they need.

If your fashion line has any particular customer favorites, make sure you highlight them.

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8. Apply SEO (search engine optimization) strategy

The most well-structured, benefits-forward fashion copy won’t convert a single customer if it doesn’t get seen. Make sure you show up among the hordes of other fashion brands by employing solid SEO (search engine optimization) strategies. This could be:

• Conducting keyword research and incorporating primary and secondary keywords into your fashion copywriting
• Maintain regular activity on your fashion blog - a great place to share your knowledge of fashion trends!
• Consistently update your website
• Make sure your content for each fashion product is unique - not duplicated anywhere else on your website or a competitor’s

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9. Design for mobile

In the ever-shifting eCommerce landscape, one thing is consistent: customers are shopping with their mobile devices - and it’s easier than ever before for them to bounce away.

People can now shop anywhere, anytime - on the train on the way to work, on the sofa after dinner, in line at the supermarket. This means your fashion copy and website must be optimized for viewing on mobile devices.

• Short, digestible nuggets rather than long paragraphs
• Visual structure like sub-headings and bulleted lists
• Responsive formats for both text and multimedia

10. Build a smart structure

Even if you zero in on your ideal customer, lead with benefits and use sensory and emotional language, your fashion product description will only be as effective as its presentation. 

On one hand, that minimalist edge will only get you so far - you’ll give too little information to be useful, and customers will bounce to other products where they can inform themselves better.

On the other hand, a hurricane wall of text will simply overwhelm them and sweep them right into the next business.

While there is certainly no “one size fits all” for fashion product descriptions, most highly converting product descriptions are scannable with white space, have consistent length across categories, and have a few elements in common:

• Magnetic but concise headline
• Problem setup and benefits-forward paragraph
• Easy-to-ready bulleted benefits list
• Final motivation with clear call-to-action

There you have it, 10 fashion copywriting tips and examples to help you master your next season or product rollout.

But wait! There's more!

We promised you a bonus tip - you'll want to make sure you check out this one.

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*Bonus Tip* 11. Automate your fashion copywriting for efficiency and consistency

Are you overwhelmed by the thought of all the factors to consider in this meticulous process, only to do it all over again every single season? Or would you just love to free up your team for higher level tasks? 

Automated fashion copywriting could be a great solution for you. 

Automating your copywriting process can help you save money while improving search engine rankings - and dramatically reduce your time-to-market cycle each and every season.

How does it work? A smart language generation engine uses a small sample of custom, manually written copy to generate up to 90% of your content automatically - 

German luxury fashion brand Mytheresa automated their category descriptions and saw awesome results:

• Increased SEO-optimization for unique, relevant content
• Boosted Google search rankings (20 places in 6 months)
• Increased primary keyword visibility (80%)

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Conclusion

Now you’ve got the tools in your pocket to truly master your fashion copywriting and stake your claim in the eCommerce fashion world. Determine and understand your target customer and write directly to them with a clear picture of how your fashion products benefit them. Use imagination-sparking sensory adjectives, appropriate industry lingo and a solid digestible structure optimized for mobile. 

If you’d like help producing the immense volumes of content you need in a consistent, reproducible way - all while saving incredible time and money - Xanevo is here to help! 

We offer highly customized product description generation - in your brand voice, with your keywords, and all at the click of a button. Each and every season.

Curious? Book a free, no-obligation 30-minute consultation with Xanevo today and take the first step towards revolutionizing your fashion copywriting.