Thought Repository

Fashion Simulator


I've always been a jeans and t-shirt guy. That's how I know how to dress. For something fancy I've got a suit, but anywhere in the middle I'm very uncomfortable. More and more recently I've realized that I'd like to dress better, at least sometimes. At least I should have a decent wardrobe that I should never stress over an otherwise fun event because I'm not sure what I have to wear that would be appropriate.

It finally came to a head over Thanksgiving. I had to go to my high school reunion. It was at a club, not a place I'd normally go. I didn't know what to wear for clubbing but I desperately wanted to prove that I wasn't the same uncool geek I was in high school. My mom and I went out and got a few things that made me feel great that night. I know it might not be cool to go shopping with my mom, but I just can't do it myself. After that great start (particularly the shoes) I decide this was a good time to solve this problem once and for all.

Over winter break I was going to go shopping for more close but it didn't happen while I was home, which meant I had to go by myself back in Pittsburgh. I needed some nicer things for visiting companies in California on the ETC west coast field trip. Shopping for clothes by myself is hard. Even with trying on clothes I'm not sure whether it really looks good or not or whether I will wear it. Many previous trips clothes shopping have ended up in items that sit in my closet unworn because I changed my mind after I got them home. I think I did a little bit better this time, but then I had a new idea.

I was trying on clothes to see what looked good out of my whole wardrobe (not just the new stuff I had tried on in the store). I was trying to decide what to pack for California. More generally, I just wanted to get a sense of what looks good with what and that sort of thing. I decide to start taking pictures of the outfits so that I could get some female opinions later.

Then I had a very nerdy idea. I laid out all the items in categories (shirts, pants, undershirts, sweaters, etc). I started making at many matches as I thought were reasonable. The goal is to build a fashion simulator. This will be a website much like my existing picture browsing site but it will know which items each outfit is comprised of. You can rate the outfits, try to build an outfit (if I'd previously taken the picture), and search by item. This way I can use other people to rate my clothes and hopefully I can learn from that what works and what doesn't.

I've started this project. At first I thought I really needed it, now I think I'm fine, but I'll probably finish it anyway. Fortunately, the best thing that has come out of this is that the work I've done on the fashion simulator gave me the clue I needed to figure out how to enable plugins to my picture browsing software and how that will enable the multi-user module I've been thinking about for awhile.

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