Fashion as Art

Virginia Postrel has an article in this month's Atlantic about fashion exhibits at art museums, and the tension that creates. (Is fashion really art? Does it belong in a museum?) Personally, I think in 300 years all the art from this era will be our consumer products, not our "high art." There's a great quote from Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “Fashion is really seen as the bastard child of capitalism and female vanity.”

Here's an idea: referrals

SXSW had more than just good techie panels and fun parties -- I was surprised to stumble across a thought provoking idea for online clothing retailers in one of the panels. Amelia G, of blueblood.net, asked the question "why don't clothing retailers refer people to each other's sites?" Amelia is in the adult content business, and there, if a customer does not buy from you they are referred to a competitor. "A competitor? Why?" I hear you say. Because the competitor will pay you a referral fee of around $15, and it's better to make $15 off of someone than nothing.

What does this have to do with Dressr? Part of what I think about is how Dressr, the web, and various technologies will change the retail clothing business. And this was a great insight into something that it makes sense to do -- but retailers are stuck in "business as usual" trains of thought and aren't there yet. (I'll point out they've been doing this offline for years. The next time you're in a mall, notice how 2 or 3 stores of a similar type will cluster together to draw customers from each other.)

Sharing customers works in the real world. No one buys all of their clothes from just one store. It could work in the online world, too. If the incentive was high enough, retailers would send people to the "right" place. As Amelia said "if I buy an interesting T-shirt from one place, why wouldn't I be interested in buying a different T-shirt from another site?"

"All early software projects suck in some ways"

I'm a big fan of Dharmesh Shah's On Startups blog, and a recent post reminded me so much of where I am with Dressr:

One of the hardest things to do when getting a new project off the ground is finding that early mass of users to actually try it and tell you why it sucks. No doubt it sucks, because all early software projects suck in some ways, you need to know why it sucks.

This is very reassuring to me. This is why I launched Dressr for SXSW -- before it was really ready. And this is where I am now -- walking the fine line between "is it enough?" and "getting the word out as much as possible." Right now I know Dressr sucks -- my post SXSW traffic has a couple of people signing up but very few using it -- so the next thing to figure out is "why it sucks."

I figure I'm going to fix some of the issues that have become obvious from the post-SXSW usage trends (design, "getting" it, usability), and then go for round 2 of this type of user/feedback/fix loop.

Man this is hard...

Launching a project like Dressr "into the wild" is a nervewracking experience. It's a great way to work on your product -- by watching what people do when they visit the site, you can see what you need to do next -- but at the same time it's very personal. In my regular Google searches on Dressr, I ran across this reference and immediately honed in on this reference "it looks like shit..."!!!! Luckily for me, my husband/partner/co-developer was around to talk me off the ledge and went to look for himself. Since his ego is slightly less wrapped up in Dressr, he pointed out that it was actually a recommendation of Dressr as exactly what the other commenter was asking for. Yep, upon further examination, he was right. Whew.

And I know Dressr looks... less than spiffy. I've been working with web designer Lynn Wallenstein to get that fixed. Guess I need to move the redesign up the priority list. Isn't it nice to have suggestions from nice anonymous people online? :)

Sigh. This post was a bit overly emotional instead of my usual logical geek self.

Grow your own dress...

From the University of Western Australia comes a project where microbal scum, grown on the top of a vat of wine, has been turned into a dress. I wouldn't say it is attractive, but it definitely is an interesting idea. Can you see us, 50 years from now, growing our own dresses in vats in our bathrooms...

Frock Shock

I was introduced to this wonderful term -- Frock Shock -- by the wacky and fun Catherine Halley of Domino/Scrappy Girl Decorates during SXSW. (Yes, arguably I should have been learning all sorts of useful technical stuff instead of talking thrift shopping and decorating... Conferences where you can do both, however, are few and far between.)

Frock Shock is what you feel when you stare into your closet before work and have no idea what to wear.... Isn't it a great term? Won't it be cool when you can feel no frock shock because all of your fabulous outfits are cataloged and ready for the wearing on Dressr?

Dressr is up!!

This afternoon I moved the Dressr alpha site to www.dressr.com. Are we ready for primetime? Who knows, but I wanted to make it available instead of tweaking it until it was "perfect."

Dressr lets you:

• Add items to your virtual closet using our easy bookmarklet tool or by simply uploading digital pictures.
• Create and save outfits by quickly dragging and dropping items onto an Outfit Palette.
• See all of your outfits, or anyone else's, containing a particular item of clothing.
• Search through just your closet, or everyone's closets, for particular items or outfits.
• Tag items and outfits to make it easier to find things that will go together.
• And best of all, share your closet with your friends and others, to get suggestions and ideas on outfits.

Check it out and tell me what you think!