Those other magazines — like Details and GQ — were just testing the waters of e-commerce when they, in various ways, started trying to sell you things over the Internet.  Condé Nast just trumped all previous publishing world retail efforts with a $20 million investment in farfetch, which brings together myriad luxury designers from different independent boutiques under one e-commerce umbrella.

The funding was just announced, so there’s no public outline yet of how this will play out in the pages of Condé titles.  For farfetch, the investment means further expansion (and they’re already in 140 countries).  For the magazine reading/fashion consuming public, Condé’s news means (probably) editorials that are easier to shop, and, if we’re lucky, more transparency as to how advertisers affect editorial content.  We all know they do; with the publisher’s e-commerce investment, the link just became a little more apparent.