OutfitMuse: Outfits From Your Own Closet
OutfitMuse turns the clothes you already own into complete looks, styled after whoever inspires you. It's the biggest thing I've built, it's about to open as a public beta, and it was my wife Kiley's idea from the start.
Most mornings, a closet full of clothes still turns into "I have nothing to wear." OutfitMuse is our answer to that. You photograph the pieces you own, name a muse (a celebrity, an icon, whoever's style you'd steal if you could), and get complete looks built only from clothes already hanging in your closet. No shopping list, no "just buy this $400 jacket." Just new ways to wear what you have.
It's the biggest thing I've worked on, it's about to open as a public beta, and I'm more excited about it than anything else I've shipped.
Whose idea this was
Let me get this out of the way first, because it's the most important part of the post. OutfitMuse is my wife Kiley's idea. The idea, the feel of the app, most of what's good about it: that's her.
She has the eye. She knew what the app should do long before I knew how to build it, and she has given feedback on every screen, every look and every flow since. She has also been the most thorough tester I've ever worked with. She has photographed more clothes, generated more outfits and found more of my bugs than anyone. If something in the app feels right, chances are she sent it back to me three times until it did.
I'm just a guy at a keyboard with too much time to spend on it. 😃 Kiley is the genius behind this one.
What it does
The loop is simple.
Build your closet. Snap photos of your clothes. Each piece gets cleaned up into a tidy flat-lay image, so your wardrobe reads like a catalog instead of a camera roll full of bedroom-floor photos.
Pick a muse. Tell it whose style you're after. Your muse sets the mood: the colors, the shapes, the attitude. It's the difference between "an outfit" and "an outfit that feels like her."
Tell it the moment. Casual, work, a date, a party. In about a minute you get four complete looks, and every piece in every one of them is something you already own.
Keep what you love. Save your favorites, plan them onto the week ahead, and log what you actually wore so the app knows your closet as well as you do.
The rule we never bent: everything comes from your closet. That's the whole point. The best outfit is the one you can put on tonight.
How it works
I usually spend a section of these posts on the build notes. Not this time. OutfitMuse is going to be a real commercial product, so the details of how the styling works are staying behind the curtain for now. What I can say is that a lot of work went into making the looks feel considered rather than random, and into keeping your closet yours.
The public beta
We're about to open OutfitMuse to a public beta. It's iPhone first, with a web app for everywhere else, and every account starts with a free trial. The sign-up buttons on the site say "Coming soon" for now. They'll come to life as soon as the doors open.
If you want to be first in line, keep an eye on outfitmuse.ai. Then go open your closet and see how many outfits you've been hiding from yourself.
Chris