so in a blatant attempt to sublimate incredible stress and fear about the world and my future and general life things into something trivial that I can obsess over and attempt to control completely, I have downloaded the wardrobe management app ClosetSpace and begun to clone my wardrobe with the goal of determining the total number of possible permutations and making a Cher-like flip book of outfit options. I’ve wanted to do this for ages. I’ve tried using Polyvore off and on over the years to accomplish this, but it’s not quite the interface for me and I positively LOATHE the app. ClosetSpace is pretty cute, so here’s a sort of review (?? what is this blog honestly who knows) that no one asked to see.
Pros:
very intuitive, clean interface
images can be uploaded from a device, from a phone camera, or (most importantly) by url
there’s a desktop version of the app for when I don’t want to work from my phone
you can sort items by color, type, brand, price, date worn, and number of times worn
items are sorted by type! like there’s a row of tops, a row of skirts, a row of dresses, etc.
you can put together outfits and save them
you can schedule outfits on a calendar (I doubt I’ll do much of this but who knows)
you can tag outfits by event type, weather, and temperature!
if you add the price of each item and log when you wear things it’ll calculate cost-per wear (!!!) and give you stats on which items you wear most often and which colors you tend to wear
it’s freeeeeee!!!!
Cons:
when you create an outfit it doesn’t save the different components where you left them, but spreads them out in a collage, so sometimes the tops are on the bottom
there’s no background removal feature :( this is probably the biggest issue for me, since I’m a) obsessive b) spoiled after five years of Polyvore with its fancy cropping feature c) OBSESSIVE.
since I can’t find images of some of my clothes online at all even though they were purchased in the last 3 months from major brandname stores (?? banana republic whyyy???) I’ll have to take photos myself, which will infuriate me because I don’t have any white walls anywhere in my apartment
there are unstated image dimensions that might cause images that are too large to fail to load, although they will appear to load successfully
adding a whole wardrobe takes time and a lot of work, even if you go ahead and just take photos, because of the comprehensive tagging that’s part of the process of adding an item. I have very few clothes compared to just about everyone I know, and it’s taking me a while. but I’m obsessive, so there’s that
General complaints, unrelated to ClosetSpace: I have discovered that Polyvore conceals image source urls, so all those hours of work I put in to tracking down perfect, high-resolution images of the exact blouse I bought four years ago, all I can get back from Polyvore is a shitty 150x150 thumbnail that somehow sabotages Google’s reverse image search function. So I’ve got to start tracking down some of these things all over again.
But I’m excited! If I can find a way around the background removal and/or manage to take sufficiently flawless photos of my clothes, I might just fall in love with this app.
