Google helps build ‘data dress’ app that designs garments based on lifestyle
With help from Google, a new app is blending the world of a custom fashion and personal data.
Called Coded Couture, the app was built by Ivyrevel — an online fashion house backed by H&M — in partnership with Google. Coded Couture’s first product is the Data Dress, a personalised dress that’s created by tracking the user’s lifestyle for a week.
One of Ivyrevel’s founders, Kenza Zouiten, created the first data dress by letting the app log a week of her activities. Here’s how it worked.
To get started, you’ll have to tell the Coded Couture app what type of dress you’re looking for: business, party, or gala.
A business dress will have a more conservative cut and fewer embellishments, a party dress will likely be short and flashier, and a gala dress will be long and appropriate for a black-tie event.
Once you pick the occasion, you’ll be asked to select a style. Choosing a “sexy & confident” party dress created a style with long sleeves, a plunging neckline, and a thick belt to cinch the waist.
The app will start tracking your activities in order to create the dress. When Zouiten went for a run, the app tracked how far she went and the neighbourhood she ran in, interpreting that into a pattern on the dress.
When Zouiten went dancing with friends, the app logged that too and added diamond details (or more likely, crystals) to the dress.
Since the app is tracking your location, it can tell when you go out to dinner with friends...
...and checks in with you to make sure it has the right place.
What’s most interesting is how the app interprets your activities. Since Zouiten lives in Stockholm where it’s been a chilly 28 degrees Fahrenheit, the app made her a black velvet dress. And since she went to a fancy restaurant with friends, the app added a stylish silver belt.
By the end of a week, the dress becomes almost a map of all the activities the user has done and the places she’s been to.
Over the course of the week, users can check in and see how the dress is progressing...
...but you have to carry your smartphone with you everywhere to give the app the most accurate representation of your life. You can also edit the dress once it’s finished if you’re not happy about a particular detail.
Ivyrevel hasn’t said how much the dresses will cost yet, only that they’ll be available at an “accessible price level” and anyone can order one, regardless of location.
Once the dress has been created, you’re not obligated to purchase it. But it does encapsulate what Ivyrevel calls your “unique personal story,” and it will be one-of-a-kind.
The Data Dress isn’t available just yet — Ivyrevel is only opening up the beta version of the app to “selected global style influencers” — but the app will launch to the public later this year.
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An app called Coded Couture is blending the world of a custom fashion and personal data