Monday 20 July 2009

wardro.be

I had this great idea for a website, and it'll make millions if it ever works or gets off the ground or anything. But being the sort of person who shoots himself int he foot as a matter of principle, rather than keeping quiet about it, doing a few years of development and beta testing, I'll just write about it here so someone else can do all the work.

My idea is last.fm for clothes!!!

Is that not a work of genius?

Last.fm is this website that tracks what music you listen to, it lists all your favourite artists and tracks, and recommends similar artists and you can look up what other people are listening to and join groups of fans and now you can stream music for free from last.fm and buy tickets and get regular email updates and all the usual social media sorts of things.

My idea for last.fm for clothes (or wardro.be as I'd call it if someone else hadn't alread parked the url) would be the same sort of thing. The first page for newbies would say "What are you wearing today?" and and on the left you click through different options.
  • Hat
  • Shirt
  • T-shirt
    • Plain
      • Black
        • Marks&Sparks
          • 2008
          • other
        • H&M
        • C&A
        • other
      • White
      • Yellow
      • other
    • Pattern
    • Print
    • other
  • Jeans
  • Shoes
  • other
And on the right it has this stylised fashiony picture that gets populated with your choices, and at the bottom of the page it updates with recommendation, like what shoes most people wear with the other clothes you've chosen, or what celebrities wear when they wear the same combinations, or what you already have in your wardrobe or other clothes tagged the same.

And for each full outfit you do, you can tag it, like 'work', 'goth', 'wedding', 'twee', 'incorrectly labelled twee'.

And its all so much fun that once you've done what you're wearing today, you had scurry away to your wardrobe and drawers and the go through and add all the clothes you own. And they it 'll do its database magic and say which celebrities your fashion tastes most closely match, or who you fashion buddies would be in the world.

And the the next day when you visit the site, and enter what you're wearing you can click from your own wardrobe, and it'll suggest what other people wear, or what matches based on some 'pants stealing gnome' algorithm, and if you click through, it'll have a wee stylised picture of what you could be looking like.

See last.fm is only for people who listen to music, but everyone in the office wears clothes. Heck, you don't even have to do yourself, you can map the girl sitting next to you, and then use wardro.be to say "I think some red shoes would really match that outfit you're wearing".

The gimps who run the website will spend hours and hours adding the clothes of whoever's in the gossip mags each week, building up profiles of celebs. Fashionists can check to see what the latest fashions are. My ma can check if I need any socks, and if I do, which ones will most likely fit my tastes. Gok Wan sponsorship to recommend you try different combinations you've never thought of before.

Advertisers can buy ads for specific types of clothes wearing people. Affiliate linky people let users of wardro.be click through to buy the clothes they most need.

Stats enthusiasts could see who owns the most shoes or the most band t-shirts or the complete range of levi jeans. Marks and Sparks could upload their barcode database, so you can just scan instead of click

So on the back end of things, you've got
  • one table many columned for items of clothing
  • one table for who owns which clothes
  • one table for who wore what combinations when and what tags they have
Its all going to need a funky user interface to keep it fun, and neat pictures or approximations of every item of clothing, and then some kind of provacy options so you can chose whether or not to let your flatmates, sister or ma rummage through your stuff.

But it could work, it could be bigger than last.fm.

So if any computery folk read this and think its great and make it happen and end up being millionaires based on my idea, can you buy me an X-Box 360, cheers.

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