Introduction

We all want to be our best dressed. This is how Drest was born. Our decisions of what to wear influence how people perceive us on a daily basis. Every day we make the conscious choice of how to present ourselves. Wearing the same clothes all the time is like eating the same food all the time, it gets boring. Organizing your life physically manifests itself in your mind. The more organized you are, the more clearly you can think. It can be difficult to always know what to wear or where to find new inspiration for style. How do you plan ahead what clothes you will wear for special occasions? Whether you were trying to find an outfit for work, a date, or a wedding, you have to decide how you can look your best. One of my best friends is constantly teased about dressing like a dad and I told him that there are resources for him to be more fashionable. I wanted to create a better application for him and everyone else that would redefine clothing organization and personal stylist recommendations. One of the main inspirations that influenced my idea was the website lookbook.nu, where people take amateur to professional level photographs of fashion-oriented outfits they curated. They tag and include the brand names and sometimes the prices of these outfits so that others can be influenced. This form of social media was an invaluable source for my creative direction.

Value Proposition

Cohesive Organization:

Clothing organization apps previously struggled to present users with uploaded images of their clothes. The majority of them have poorly cut-out articles of clothing with white background png images. Other apps use entire photographs with random carpets, hardwood floors, or the person's hands holding them up. Drest uses a new concept of choosing a contour vector-based outline of the style of clothing you’re going to upload. For instance, select a basic t-shirt shape, take your picture of your shirt in bounds of that and then the image of your shirt neatly fits into the stylized Drest clothing border.

Free Membership:

The majority of competitive apps have signup fees and paywalls for stylists. One of the primary goals of Drest is to create an ad-free environment where users choose if they want to purchase clothing that is included in the “Looks” section. The Looks section is the social media aspect of the app where users can see what others have put together including brand names and item costs.

How Drest Works

Upload photographs and put them into groups. Plan future outfits based on date and weather. Search for new inspiration from other users’ uploaded Looks/Outfits.

When a user downloads the app they will be asked to log in or create a new membership. Then they will be greeted by the homepage, which shows images of other users. The first step is to go to the upload icon and choose from one of the contour outline shapes of clothing. This includes a variety of options including hats, shirts, dresses, skirts, shorts, pants, shoes, socks, etc. Once you select an outline you will give permission for your camera to take a picture of an article of clothing. For a graphic t-shirt, you will line up the graphic within the bounds of the contour line and snap the picture. The app will then ask if this is suitable for you to then upload your garment to one of the wardrobe sections. From here you can look at your wardrobe and edit your categories. Once you have your clothing uploaded into your wardrobe you can use the Calendar feature to plan future looks. Piece together garment by garment as the outfit takes shape on the right of your screen. The calendar section also shows the weather for the upcoming week and gives you information and suggestions on what clothing is suitable for the weather. The looks section is a wall of images of other users’ uploaded outfits. You can also upload your own full image outfits that you've created. The last section is the favorites section, which organizes the outfits that you love. The favorites show outfits you've created and the ones from other users’ looks that you can use to create your own inspiration in the future.

The Design Process

User Research

I went directly to the source of competition by searching for similar keywords in the Apple App Store. I searched for clothing organizations and personal stylist apps. I downloaded and went through free trials to see how these designers made choices for what they included within the app. I started making lists of what I felt these designers had missed. Based on what I disliked in existing apps, I created key elements of my design structure. The apps I downloaded are Outfit Planner - GetWardrobe, Purple Outfit Planner, Style Book, and Closet+. The biggest design flaw that I saw in all of these apps was that there was no way for users to upload pictures of clothing in a consistent way. Every page is flooded with white backgrounds or random backgrounds of wherever they decided to take the picture. On carpet, hardwood, or on s bed- nothing looked consistent and it was distracting and ugly to me. I had the idea to create a system where depending on what style of clothing you are choosing you could fit it within a vector-based outline. Let's say you are uploading a dress, you would be prompted to choose a vector-based contour line shape that resembles the shape of your clothing. You would then take a picture of the fabric of the clothing or the graphic representation of the dress. The fabric would then fill in the contour shape. This created a PNG-style vector and photo-based organization system that didn’t have inconsistencies.

Another valuable inspiration was Lookbook.nu. Lookbook created a social media platform where users could look at others’ outfits and see tags within the images of what each article of clothing was. Brand, size, price, etc. I thought it would be most beneficial for articles of clothing to be suggested to match what they already had. For instance, if a user had a floral dress then they would get suggestions on what shoes to wear with it.

I created a poll with multiple choice and open-ended questions. I asked family and friends to fill out the poll to research what was desired within a clothing app.

According to my poll of 49 people, 35.7% of people wore 50% of their wardrobe. Most people don’t use all of their clothes. 54.8% of people wanted to reduce the number of clothes that they own. With this information, I realized that Drest will be useful to help those who want to get rid of clothes they don’t want by uploading the ones they do want to keep. Simultaneously, it will also still help influence people to purchase new items and help them be more stylish-60% of people reported the most difficult part of decision-making when picking an outfit is that people don’t know what to wear. This statistic backs up that people need help, 85% of users reported that everyday clothing was what was most important for their stylistic choices. This statistic makes sense, there are many more normal days than special occasions. Regardless of the plan, Drest can help one plan for it.

People who used clothing apps before stated the sizing of buying clothes was always wrong. They also felt that they were being targeted by ads more than being helped to choose better clothing. They felt like they were only being subjected to purchasing things. I decided Drest was going to be a social network with the intent of users helping each other and any sort of profit was going to be led by the user. I do not want users to be bombarded by ads, but if they find something they like, then they can purchase the clothing through a link.

Brand Assets

Naming:

My creative process for naming this project was inspired by the conversation. I was contemplating ideas for naming this project with a close friend. I was explaining the idea for the potential brand’s identity, that I wanted to help people dress their best. The combination of these two words created the brand. Best + Dressed = Drest. I thought of having the tagline simply be, “dress your best”, but I felt that might be a little too on the nose. I then came up with something more poetic, “show your true colors”. I felt this tagline expressed showing the best version of yourself and was also more articulate in expressing a similar phrasing.

Designing the Logo:

The logo process started out with a round of thumbnail sketches that felt way too literal. I find that it’s good to let that happen because then you can get the obvious ideas moved out of the way for more innovative design concepts. The first concept was a D made out of a dress. This is what I meant by way too literal. I then thought of making a D out of clothing-oriented shapes. I started to sketch D logos out of clothes hangers. I also thought of making a D out of a dresser and its drawers. The clothes hanger felt like a stronger mark, so I continued to refine it until it matched the ideas I had for typography.