I'm a Luxury Fashion Exec—Here's How I Use Amazon to Find the Best Holiday Gifts

With 20+ years of luxury fashion industry experience, Trisha Gregory knows how to give the most incredible gifts during the holiday season, so naturally, I had a ton of questions for her. I don’t usually think of Amazon as the place to find anything luxury (I’m usually buying toothpaste or a USB cord I swear I already own), but talking to Trisha changed that immediately. She walked me through how she actually uses Amazon to source elevated, thoughtful gifts and why the platform’s luxury offerings are better than most people realize.

So, I asked her everything: how she discovers new brands on the site, the curation tools she swears by, and how Saks Fifth Avenue entered the chat. Her answers completely reframed the way I think about holiday gifting on Amazon, and I pulled all her best insider tips below, plus a shopping list that can’t be missed.

How do you use the luxury side of Amazon to discover pieces?

The luxury side of Amazon is built out to have a dedicated brand store, and so if you are to search for your designer brand of choice, you're taken to a dedicated brand store that's filled with content and the narratives that the brands produce. We have so many customers, and if they are stumbling across or coming to luxury stores with intention, we want them to be fully immersed in the brand. You can also sort by any term like black jackets, but if you are to want to know more about the brand, we really want to tell that story.

How do you use the luxury side of the site to find gifts? Any secret hacks?

Well, with Amazon Lens, you can take a photo of something similar and it can point you in the right direction, if not find the exact product. In the meantime, we are building more conversational AI styling tools and gift-giving tools that will be specific to luxury stores. For gifting season, we'll have the on-site merchandising and curations from some of our ambassadors and creators that we’re working on right now for the holidays, which I’m looking forward to shopping.

For the reader who doesn’t know about Rufus, what prompts do you recommend, how do you use it, and what is it for someone who has no idea, in your words?

If you're looking for a certain price point or a certain type of gift, you can ask Rufus to show you. I always include words like “luxury” or “fashion relevant.” I think that best helps curate what the response is going to be. The more you input, the more it brings in from your past purchases, your past browsing, you know, across other sites potentially. It will then produce an answer that I think is very personalized for you.

How did the partnership with Saks come about, and how is Amazon partnering with other luxury retailers and brands?

It was an interesting marriage. It’s a fantastic partnership that makes so much sense. We had partnered with several brands—mono brands—directly to build storefronts. We started discussions with Saks on what it could look like to build a multi-brand destination, just as you might see in a mall—in hyper shops, you have Saks at the end of the mall and you have all the mono brands down to the multi-brand retailer at the end. And so they have come on with over 50 brands, and it’s kind of a brand-by-brand decision whether they want to join the Saks assortment or if they want to have a dedicated storefront directly, where the brand sets the pricing, the product curation, and the content direction, of course. So it’s going really well.

What do you think surprises people the most about Amazon Luxury?

That it exists! We put a lot of discoverability focus behind the program this year. We’ve been running the program for a few years—five years—and while the brands have performed really well and the customers have been delighted to find the assortment, we receive a lot of questions like, “How do I find it? Where is it?” So, you know, now it’s personalized to the user on Amazon, of course, but most often you can find it in the top navigation. The Saks assortment has been launched for a couple of months, and so it’s much easier to find. And I think that excited response and definitely the conversion that we’ve seen has given us a lot of confidence to continue marketing on our homepages.

What brands are you most excited to shop right now on the site?

I like Area, Stella McCartney. I love Etro. I wore Etro this summer to our Hamptons event. I love Silvia Tcherassi, and if you haven’t seen her bags, there’s this little mini in satin. So great for the holidays. And I really like Aquazzura shoes.

Are there any gifts that you think are the best from the luxury market that you plan on gifting this year?

Yes. I really have been obsessed with the Noble Panacea mask. You can sleep in it, so it’s very easy, and I think, you know, if you really want to splurge on yourself or give a really great gift to a friend, a sister, a mother, that would be a go-to for me, just given the experience I’ve had with it. I love some of the jewelry that we have—I think Oscar de la Renta always lights up an outfit and is a really fun gift to receive, not always something you buy for yourself.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to give a gift—whether it’s from the luxury side or the other side of Amazon—to make it feel thoughtful and meaningful?

There’s so such assortment across Amazon. I think understanding what the recipient needs and wants, and, you know, really inputting as much on that recipient and sort of your price points into Rufus, which can provide a really nice outcome and some suggestions. Every time I give a gift from the luxury stores to someone, whether it’s a friend, my daughter’s teacher, or whatnot, they’re very surprised that this is found on Amazon, and it’s received wrapped so beautifully. And so I think that in itself is a really fun gift—it makes you sort of unique and think outside the box about where you can get this gift.

Wow, I didn’t know about the unique packaging. Tell me more!

So, we have a dedicated fulfillment center that does custom packaging, it has heightened security, so they can really store securely and ship fine jewelry.

Do you have any examples of specific gifts you’ve given that made an impact?

I love gifting the Chantecaille water mist because I use that, and people really like it. You know, it seems extravagant—not necessarily in price, but just something that you don’t necessarily need, but once you use it, you feel refreshed, you feel hydrated, you feel calmed. Also, anything from home decor—whether it’s festive placemats or festive table skirts with the ruffled detail—I think people are always really pleasantly surprised that you can find elevated home essentials and decor on Amazon. It’s not thematic. Do you know what I mean?

Is there anything that you’re really hoping to receive this year?

That’s a really good question. You know what I would like to receive? A really classic but well-cut tweed jacket, probably from Balmain. I’m not going to buy that for myself (it’s out of my price budget), but I’d really like to own that, and I’d like to wear it from day to night. And I’m very excited to have it as part of luxury stores.

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