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Mobile shopping is easy and convenient. More and more apps are making it as simple as a couple taps, or even a swipe, to buy your favorite styles. But, these sites and apps don’t let you shop the same way you would in a retail store. Instead, most of them focus on showing you one piece at a time, styled one way — the way the brand or retailer imagines it. In real-life shopping, you’d be able to grab a handful of pieces and put together your own outfit.
A new tablet app called Lovelooks lets you do just that — virtually. Browsing fashion on Lovelooks is a lot like playing with a paper doll: You scroll and swipe through tops, bottoms, dresses, outerwear, and accessories, selecting which ones to put on your mannequin model. Then, you can either save your look (if you just feel like playing stylist), or buy each piece straight from the app. The interface is extremely polished; it almost feels like you're shopping on Net-A-Porter, except you're the one piecing together an outfit from top and up-and-coming fashion brands.
With this outfit-focused interface, Lovelooks perhaps most closely aligns with apps such as Covet Fashion, a game that lets you build outfits from 150 major brands — and compete in style challenges for the best looks. Lovelooks is different because the pieces are photographed in real life (rather than illustrated, as in Covet Fashion), and the end focus is more about personal style exploration and purchasing, rather than competing against other app users. And, unlike Polyvore, which lets you cut and paste fashion items together into image collages, Lovelooks styles items on a mannequin form, so you get a really solid idea of what your styles would look like in everyday life.
Like we mentioned before, Lovelooks photographs each piece in-house, so the looks you build end up looking like a professional spread from a blog or magazine. The app has some built-in features to ensure each outfit ends up looking top-notch.
“You can’t layer three pants and four sweaters,” Julie Agashiwala, Lovelooks co-founder, told Refinery29. “There are rules within the app that certain things exclude each other, so it always ends up good-looking and inspiring.” This even extends to trying to layer a tight, form-fitting jacket over a loosely flowing dress. In the future, Agashiwala plans to offer different views (say, with the jacket zipped and unzipped) to accommodate for a wider variety of styling scenarios. The app may also add a subscription-based personal styling service, so you can get new outfits tailored to your aesthetic delivered to the app on a regular basis.
Lovelooks is launching with a handful of designer brands (including Nicholas K and Band of Outsiders) and is photographing pieces from others — so users have a mix of styles and fashions to choose from. The app features in-season items that are available for purchase right as you browse (and will be removed from the app when stocks are depleted or the season is finished), classic vintage items (some for sale, some not) to use for inspiration, and archival collections from designers. New items are photographed and added to the app each week.
Lovelooks is free and available today in the App Store and Google Play.
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