Moda Operandi: Click, Cash, Couture

True couture addicts who attend the runway shows at New York’s Fashion Week—or at least watch them online—can’t help but compile a mental wish list: a BCBGMaxAzria silk dress, perhaps, or a pair of Alexander Wang’s metallic glitter pants. Tragically for them, these wants rarely translate into actual purchases. The clothes chosen by large department store buyers often get “edited” to make them more commercial—a fur collar is trimmed here, a leather belt is added there—so what’s finally available is a watered-down version of the designer’s original vision. This is precisely the crisis the 7-month-old Manhattan-based website Moda Operandi set out to address. The members-only online shopping portal allows fashion slaves to add exotic runway fare to their personal wardrobes weeks before the full lines enter stores.

“I myself experienced wanting pieces that came down the runway only to learn that they weren’t going to be made, and there was no way of getting them,” says Aslaug Magnusdottir, 43, Moda Operandi’s Icelandic-born chief executive officer, a former attorney who worked as a merchandiser for Gilt Noir, a sample sale site based in New York. In 2009, Magnusdottir heard clothing designers complain that major retailers weren’t buying their favorite creations. That fall was particularly rough: Luxury goods sales at department stores were down 25 percent to 30 percent on average from their peak in early 2008, according to Fitch Ratings. “[The stores] were buying the really commercial pieces, being really safe,” Magnusdottir says.