Our relationship with fashion has changed, not just because of the pandemic. Months in lockdown means people are probably more aware of their fashion purchases and how they consume, given it’s been such a long time without socializing. But the oft-talked about ‘Clueless wardrobe’, which would allow women to see into their collections and share and potentially borrow from friends, has yet to go mainstream. Now, a UK startup aims to change this. Previously in closed beta, the Little Black Door app has just launched on the Apple iOS store here and Android.
The app allows women to share the content of their wardrobes in an Instagram-like manner by creating collections (“Lookbooks”) and curating their closets for their use, focusing on premium and luxury fashion. Women, says LBD, can “see, style and share”, borrow clothes offline, and resell them. The Lookbook feature allows women to share wardrobe collections with friends or followers in a controlled way, a feature that lets users borrow from each other. Co-founder Lexi Willetts says, “We’d simply gotten to a point where we didn’t know what fashion we owned, given that almost every other area of life allows this.
Most fashion can be easily dash-boarded on our phones – we couldn’t understand why our wardrobe wasn’t! Equally, the effort required to list an item on resale was also sard.” Willetts and co-founder Marina Pengilly developed the app when they realized they could make as much as £30,000 a year reselling their luxury clothes and accessories online. LBD is going after four key trends: the rise of resale (Depop, etc.), rentals like Rent the Runway, AI in e-commerce, and re-receipts. Users upload their wardrobe by taking a photo of an item. The app will then recognize the thing using computer vision. Lookbooks showcasing fashion collections, new and old, also have an “I have this” button, allowing users to add items to their wardrobes or add as they buy automatically via links to retailers.
Another critical feature allows users to see into their wardrobes what they have and, crucially, how much they’ve spent and owned in value. Users can also create a Lookbook, not unlike Pinterest, which can be shared with friends or a wider fashion community in a public or private group-controlled way. Lookbooks can be shared with a user’s network to see your style or borrow the outfit. As well as this, LBD curates a feed of fashion/lifestyle news and surveys. Willetts says partnerships with retailers and supplier deals for sales and fashion repairs are also in the offing.
LBD competes with the ‘Save Your Wardrobe’ app. But it is pushing the fact that it places a greater emphasis on sharing the wardrobe and allows people to borrow items, focusing on premium and luxury fashion – ADD …this is a genuinely social wardrobe. The business model will likely be a Premium version that unlocks extra features, affiliate revenues, advertising, and resale commissions. Disclosure: Mike Butcher was an early, informal adviser.