With These Apps – Take Your Closet with You When You Shop

December 10, 2012

Wouldn’t it be great if every clothing purchase you made went perfectly with everything in your closet?  That would certainly save a lot of money, time and effort. Thanks to technology, that dream is now a reality. 

I have to say, I love all the latest fashion and style apps but most are really only for entertainment.  Gilt and Haute are both ones that sell beautiful designer clothes at discount.  When you sign up, you get daily emails showing daily sales from four or five designers.  At first, this held my interest, but after about a week or so, it got a little old and the emails became annoying.

All the clothes being pushed at you is overstimulating to say the least but I wondered, how do you really know if they will work for you? If you’re like me, you fall in love with some beautiful article of clothing and bring it home only to find it goes with absolutely nothing you own.  I almost want a guarantee that the item will coordinate with everything in my closet. Is that too much to ask?

I guess not because some geniuses invented smartphone apps that take your closet with you when you shop.  You can actually take a photo of your future purchase and see how it will look with what you already own.  Now that is a great invention.

Here’s how it works.  You take photos of everything in your closet with your smart phone and upload them to your selected style site. (There is an upfront time commitment — I didn’t say it was perfect).  Then you categorize your items so the app knows whether the item you uploaded is a shirt or a dress. Once you have them all in, you can coordinate your wardrobe from there.  Now when you are shopping for, let’s say, a blouse to match your business suit, you can pull up the suit right there in the store.  You can eyeball it or if you want to actually see the outfit together, actually take a photo of the blouse and add it to your outfit on your phone.

I can see this saving you money in a couple of ways. First of all, you’ll never waste money again by buying something that doesn’t go with anything in your closet.  Secondly, and more importantly, it forces you to stop and think.  The store would rather you not do that.  They want you to act on impulse.  They have displays set out to capture your eye, music to change your mood and sale racks designed for you to excitedly grab a bargain or two – all designed for you to spend more money, making it very easy to overspend when shopping.  Even online merchants have tricks; the fashion sites have one-day sales forcing you to make a quick decision.  They want you to be more concerned about your item being sold out (fear of loss) rather than making the perfect purchase.

With a “map of your closet” type app, you can stop and do a quick but fairly in-depth analysis right there with your phone – changing your mood from that of an emotional impulse buyer to an analytical super shopper in a few seconds.

Here are three “map of your closet” apps to check out.  The first one is $4 (which is high for an app but has excellent ratings and comments) but the other ones are free.  Check them out and get started now to start saving money on clothes for 2013.

Resources:

Stylebook  123 Dress Me  Stylish Girl

Do you have any money saving apps that you love?  Let me know by leaving your comment and we’ll review them in future blogs.