Need To Design The Perfect Dress? There's An App For That

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Google and H&M digital fashion house Ivyrevel partner to create the first data-driven dress.

Google  and retailer H&M Group’s digital fashion house Ivyrevel recently partnered to create a new smartphone app that uses contextual data from shoppers to help them design dresses for themselves. Currently in beta test, the Android app leverages Google’s Awareness API and Snapshot API to collect and record lifestyle information over the course of one week, including restaurant choices, travel locales, and other common behaviors and then analyzes that data to create a dress design inspired by their habits. Consumers are also able to purchase the dress within the app.

Aiming to bring “couture to the digital age,” The project was called “Coded Couture,” and it uses the Awareness API to create a user’s own personalized, custom-made dress based on their own preferences. The platform allows users to choose the style  and category of dress, but the choice of material, color, embellishment, and added details are data-driven, according to Google. For instance, the platform chooses material and fit based on data like temperature and activity levels.

According to WWD, the team needed  more than a year to develop the data dress app. Ivyrevel co-founder Aleksandar Subosic told WWD, “It’s such an exciting moment. We’re about to change the fashion industry by bringing the customer’s personality into the design process through data technology. To get a unique piece of clothing today, you need to either buy a custom-made design piece or design it yourself, but that is generally not an affordable option and most people lack the design experience. The data dress enables women around the world to order a dress made entirely for them that reflects the way they live their lives.”

Stockholm-based Ivyrevel said it aimed to produce “the world’s first data dress” and that “by bringing the customer’s personality into the design process through data technology,” it can help bring about a massive change in the fashion industry. The custom dresses begin at $99, and the app is anticipated to be released later this year.