I have bought many clothes over the years that I love and then don’t wear. I’ve also been trying (DECADES) to style my clothes better, to varying degrees of non-success in the past. I am going to share something that has been helping and doesn’t require more clothes, stylist fees, or researching rules… a digital closet app I’ve been using.

I am, fundamentally, a pretty visual person, especially as it comes to how I organize things. Seeing is believing, etc.

I can’t just say to myself: “pattern mixing of one small pattern and one large pattern, should have two colors in common, and have one geometric and one organic pattern in them…” but if I see an example of this, I get it instantly.

Like this outfit, say.

I also have a memory that can’t hold on the ANYTHING clothes related… so putting an outfit together that I like, and even wearing it once or twice, doesn’t mean I’ll have any memory that is jogged when looking in my closet for something that works to wear the next time I need something a little better than my jeans and tshirt uniform. And forget rules or guidelines to follow- I just don’t work that way.

And so I was where a lot of people are, I think, owning a lot of clothes I liked but defaulting to wearing tshirts and athletic shorts during the day or jeans and a black shirt to go out.

As one of my resolutions/goals this year is to get a better handle on wearing the things in my closet (and wearing big earrings 5 times a week or more) I got a digital closet app to organize my clothes and hopefully help me combine pieces and wear them more instead of the 10% of my closet I was wearing on repeat.

Also, a lot of the traditional apps or tools people use never did quite fit for me, as I didn’t want to conform to various current style rules, you know? Trent Krim from Ted Lasso, various songbirds, 1940s men, 1930s women, and Peruvian indigenous women are my fashion inspirations… so if you don’t like my particular outfits I both get it and it doesn’t bother me.

I have seen too many things in this world now to try to fit in, I find. My aims now are for my outward self to more closely match my inside reality, and so I wanted an app that could help me do that better so I can walk through this world as my more authentic self.

How’d it go and what app did I use? I went with Whering and it’s AWESOME- aside from spellcheck trying to autocorrect it to “whoring” every time I type it.

Turns out I love this thing! I did a minimal amount of research and went with this one as it seemed like the most streamlined, was free, and didn’t have any sales pitches to work with a stylist- though you can, in fact, do that with this app if you want.

It is a bit of a pain to upload pics of your clothes, but not terrible. Pics of the individual clothes (flat laid, not on) should be taken against a plain background- I’d recommend a bed with a white sheet. I have added new clothes having taken their picture on a yellow sheet and the app color corrects for uniformity, and so all my clothes taken on the yellow sheet are not exactly true to color of the clothes themselves.. Not a huge deal, but a bit annoying.

Once you upload them into the app it sorts them by the category it thinks they fall in… and some correction would be needed there so you can “build” an outfit more easily in the app carousel.

Best thing is that carousel feature where you have tops, bottoms, and shoes (or a five layer option including jackets and outerwear) so you can spin through everything in your wardrobe and see what every bottom looks like with every top. Shared colors between pieces really jump out at you doing this, so it’s easy to put things together.

Once you have an outfit you like you can save it in categories or look books that you create. Here is what it looks like when you click into a category.

You can also see all outfits, without having to click into a category, should you just want to look through everything at once.

Below are the 5 categories I have. I’ve also done it for capsule wardrobes for trips and just combined outfits on the pieces I was packing… that worked well too.

I am as unhelpful at naming categories as I am at naming blog posts. But whatever. It still works.

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Couple of tricks.

When you go to save an outfit, you will need to hit the pencil icon and resize and move things around. Randomly I have some jackets that come through tiny, some necklaces and shoes that are giant, etc. Also, you will need to add in the accessories, or other shoe options. It is worth the time to do so you have a better feel for the actual outfit.

Here is an example of a resized and moved around outfit in the app.

Here is said outfit on.

What is really useful is to drop in 5 or six different earrings and then delete out the ones that don’t work- and that’s how I figured out these earrings I never wore worked with the red in this shirt. I wouldn’t have a million years put my red, white, and black earrings with a red, white, black, and grey outfit… which is, one, ridiculous, and, two, really illustrates why something like this works for me, you know? (I am wearing them in that picture, I swear to god.)

Another thing I like is there is a randomizer feature you can use in the carousel, and I’ve gotten some decent outfits by doing that. (It’s a little dice icon you hit and it rolls through the carousels like a slot machine.)

Here is an outfit I got by “rolling the dice”- though I did change the shoes and add in the earrings.

Odd that I would have never put together all rusts and browns like that, but I dig it.

I can start standing up straight like ANYTIME, but it actually was hella cute for a casual outfit- and while simple as all get out, it also was better than just my husbands pants I cut off into shorts (I don’t want to talk about those fitting perfectly), and a plain tshirt.

The randomizer has no AI guidance or anything… there is no guarantee it won’t be a hellacious outfit, is what I’m saying, but I like it like that as AI can burn in the fiery pits of hell. Example A.

I had to put it on to help convey. It’s gonna be a no from me.

It’s A look, I’ll give it that. Some Dutch woman would probably wear it, but not me.

Every so often I spend 30 minutes putting outfits together, or uploading more pieces to add in. And just like everything the more you do it the better you get at it and therefore the more you get out of it… but rest assured I don’t live in this app- it isn’t a huge time suck.

It also has really helped build a cohesive color palette just because as you scroll through the carousel the pieces that are outliers REALLY stick out. And in those instances you can decide- do I love this piece enough to add items to make it work, or do I just move it on out? It’s been good for that.

I have found it is helping me accessorize better, use pieces I wasn’t using before, and make combinations sooo much easier than pulling everything out of the closet and trying to do it manually. Also makes way less of a mess, you know?

Is that helpful or interesting? Here’s hoping.

There is more going on around here- the painting is now done, I am weeding and mulching in the garden, the house next door has been bought and is getting flipped- so construction noise is constant but they’ve bought my patience by letting me chunk stuff in their dumpster. I went with the older girls to see David Spade in San Antonio last night (love him and hanging out with them- and it was also their first comedy show), and many other good things are bumping along. I am knocking on wood having said that, but I’ll take it.

More next time!