From the Archive: Fashion’s Online Shopping Reality

It was 1996, Paris was dropping skirt lengths and those on the business side of fashion were contemplating the road ahead. How would shopping on the internet impact physical retail? In conversation with WWD for its IQ 1996 feature was Microsoft founder Bill Gates and then-CEO of Wal-Mart Bill Fields, facing off on what was then a newly debated hot topic: The Internet vs. The Store. It felt like a long way away back then. Today, there’s no need in guessing which one is leading the race.