123dressme The app for fashionistas everywhere.

by Sabine de Witte

123dressme is an Amsterdam based startup which provides a closet organizer app that enables people to create new outfits by seeing how items from new brand collections match with their existing clothes. People can buy clothes from the closest store (located easily via a built-in store finder feature), or buy it through the app, online. 123dressme aims to help people plan outfits when travelling, categorize their wardrobe through tags, such as style, occasion or color, and can even create style recommendations based on the weather using the integrated weather feed.

Apps & fashion designers

123dressme recently found new success by partnering with local Dutch designers to showcase their work through the app. Founder Cristina Stoian says “during the Amsterdam Fashion Week we organized an event called Style it Up with the design collective KADE 43, where two stylists gave advice on outfits. 123dressme was present in order to allow people to ‘bring your new collection home with you and see if it fits your wardrobe’ in a virtual manner.” The success of this event led Cristina to experiment with promoting Dutch designers clothes in her app, even though some items were catwalk concepts and unavailable to purchase. The result was an increase in downloads of her app by 25% for the weeks surrounding the initiative. Speculating on this increase Cristina believes people were “fulfilling their fashion fantasies, they could place designer pieces next to their own items and perhaps, being inspired to look at their wardrobe differently.” Designer Melanie Brown, who agreed to place her last collection for her label Brown Clothes in 123dressme states, “Mobile is an important new trend in society and has to be embraced because fashion is a reflection of society; so if you don’t, then you wouldn’t be doing fashion.”

Cristina believes that the success of this initiative “Show’s how, even in the field of hyper-commerce, consumers want the ability to tailor their reality, and 123dressme makes this a little bit more real by enabling them to create outfits they might never own.”

Content is king

123dressme is currently only available for the iPhone and has a relatively small user base at just over 100,000 globally. Cristina Stoian who created the app as a result of StartupWeekend Amsterdam in 2010, is now seeking funding to expand the platform, especially to tablets. Though she won the ‘Idea Most Likely to Make a Million’ award at the startup event, this promise has been hard to attain. With a small team behind her, it has been a constant and steep learning curve and the recent success with designer collections reinforced one key lesson “Content is everything.” She says.  However, looking forward, 123dressme plan to create more partnerships with local talent, more events, and is in early discussions with a major fashion brand. “It’s too early to speculate, but I believe brands are like music record labels and the internet: they’re starting to get the message.”