New fashion brand owners work very hard on their product.  They spends months designing and redesigning their collections, searching for the right fabrics and trims and doing several fits so that the item is just right.  Yet many fail to invest the same effort into good photography.  The importance of good quality fashion photography cannot be overstated.  Over my career I have done a lot of catalog and on line business.  So often I have seen a good style perform poorly because the shot doesn’t do the piece justice.  The styling is flawed, the model is mediocre, the lighting is flat, and composition isn’t well thought out.
Have you ever seen of photograph of food and you wanted to eat it immediately?  You salivated from looking at the picture.  Or maybe a dress that looked stunning on a model and you wished you could look exactly like her.  In fact you bought the dress in the hopes that it would make you look like the women in the photograph. Perhaps you saw a photo of a jacket made of a luxurious leather that made you wish you could touch because it looked so soft.  It could be a scarf that the color was so vibrant you just knew you had to own it.  That is what good fashion photography will do.  It will entice you customer to purchase your product.
I know that good quality photography can be expensive.  But, it is more expensive to create a great line that doesn’t perform well because the photography doesn’t do its job.  The other role of good photography is to create the brand story.
Look at the Nike ad below.  This is photo tells the brand story.  It also evokes an emotional response which a well executed photo will do.  You think Nike and athletic as synonymous.

This Versace ad is very indicative of the brand image.  Sexy luxury dressing that is trend right.

 
This Coach ad evokes thoughts of looking pretty and contemporary and of course functional handbags.

 
The moral of this article is that good quality fashion photography is of great importance to building your brand identity and creating sales.  So treat it as the investment it is.