Darn you, Nate, I almost wasted the rest of my afternoon poking around ModCloth!
They are just using the main description and cutting it off, which I think is a missed opportunity. I'd do a one to two-line intro to the piece, the same way you would preface a link to an article on Twitter. I'd either take a line or two from the original description and stop there, or draft up one based on the most salient features of the item.