Online Boutiques

Forget spending all weekend hunting through stores trying to put together the latest spring looks. Today's savviest shoppers are going online to all the intimacy of boutique shopping at their fingertips. Top designers are reworking their Web sites to be more interactive and give personal styling advice. Marni offers shoppers the option of sorting its merchandise by look—"modern muse" or "macramé pop," for example—so customers can easily coordinate the polka-dot cashmere cardigan with the right tortoiseshell cuff. Fashion advisers at net-a-porter.com try on every single item of clothing the site sells so they can respond quickly to questions about fit and sizing.

And whereas brick-and-mortar stores tend to carry only a small percentage of each season's lines, designers can offer their full ranges from their own Web sites. Mawi (pronounced "moy"), known for its eclectic, heirloom-style jewelry, even sells items from the past four years of collections in its archives section, while its blog announces sample sales and imparts crucial fashion gossip.

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