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Cladwell what should I wear today? What's my body shape? Gemini hey ChatGPT, make me a capsule wardrobe. These days, AI is everywhere, including our closets. From apps that help you organize your wardrobe to all knowing platforms that seem to be able to answer any question. Style help has never been easier, cheaper or more accessible. But how good is it really? And can it truly help you improve your style? That's what we're talking about today. So let's get started. Welcome to the Everyday Style School, the show that teaches you everything your mom never did about getting dressed. I'm your host, Jennifer Mackie. Mary After 25 years of dressing women with real bodies, real budgets and real lives, I know great style isn't about following one size fits all advice. It's about learning what works for you. Hello gorgeous. Before we get to today's topic, I want to acknowledge that AI is a bit of a hot button issue. Some of you love it and use it all the time. Some of you hate it and think it will be the downfall of our society and our water supply. But no matter where you stand on the topic of AI, I think we can all agree on one thing. It is out there and it's being used, so there is no point in ignoring it. If you love AI, I'm not here to tell you that you're a bad person and you should stop using it. If you hate AI, I'm not telling you. You're living in the past and you need to start using it. I am not unaware of the issues surrounding it. I'm simply taking a look at how AI is being used in style and and giving you my honest, yet admittedly biased take on the topic. And what you do with that is up to you. This is a topic I've wanted to do for well over a year. The idea came to me one night when I was mindlessly scrolling TikTok and I saw a video that said, what's the most unhinged thing you've used ChatGPT for? Tell me in the comments. I probably read those comments for a half hour and and there was some crazy stuff in there, stuff I cannot, will not repeat on this show. But someone said he and his wife were using it as marriage counseling. They'd meet at the same time every week, give it a prompt or recap a fight they'd had, and let ChatGPT fix their marriage. I'd love to follow up with that guy, see how it's going. But someone else said that they used it to hypothetically allegedly plan the Perfect crime, just in case they ever needed that information. And then one comment said, I use it to create a capsule wardrobe every season. It's great. After all the crazy stuff, truly crazy stuff I just read, that was the one that stopped me in my tracks because I guess I kind of naively thought that what we do, especially with our capsule guides, requires a human touch. An entire team works on our guides to choose a palette that is current and in stores and to include the trends that our women would actually wear and to reuse some pieces that we've used before to save our women money. Like, our process is so thoughtful and incredibly considered. And it didn't seem like something that a computer could just spit out in 30 seconds, but there I was with this pit in my stomach, like, oh, well, that's it. I guess it's over. We're all doomed. We're all getting replaced by the machines. And it was the definition of doom scrolling, because I was scrolling, and I ended up feeling doomed. I moved on. I cheered myself up by watching some videos of, I don't know, cute golden retriever puppies or something that's always my. My feel good go to. And I just sort of forgot about it. But later that week, I was sitting at my desk and I was like, you know, let me just see what happens. So I opened ChatGPT and I told it to make a capsule wardrobe for me. I gave it a couple of guidelines and hit enter. The results gave me a very good sense of job security, and I just moved on. But in the months that followed, I started seeing AI creep into the style world a lot more. And when I was planning the episodes for this semester, talking about ways to make the everyday habit of style easier, I figured this would be a really good time to dive into some of the ways that I see AI being used and to answer two questions. Number one, can AI make style easier? And number two, can AI actually improve your style? Let's be clear. These are two very different questions. You can get dressed in two minutes but hate the result. That is easier but not better. Or you can spend lots of time perfecting your outfit, like choosing the perfect shoe and trying different accessories until you get it exactly the way you want to look. And the result, your style is better, but it's not necessarily easier. Most women I know want both. We want it to be easier to get dressed, and we'd like to truly love the results and have good style. That's the goal, right? So can AI help you to do both? Can it help you do One neither. I don't know. That is what we are on a mission to discover. So there are sort of two sides to AI in the style world that I want to talk about. First, we have the apps. We have things like dressly style, DNA, Cladwell, wearing, all of those. You see these advertised on your social media feed all the time, even if you didn't realize they were AI style apps. Then we have the platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. And I want to give some pros and cons to both and share my thoughts on AI in general when it comes to helping you improve your style. And like I said, from there you can decide if you want to use it or not. This was supposed to be one quick episode, but as I got into it, I discovered I have a lot to say on this topic. So I decided to break it into two parts. In this episode we're going to talk about the apps, and in the next one we're going to talk about the large language model platforms, things like ChatGPT. So let's get into the apps. I'm not going to list all of them and I'm not going to review them one by one. In fact, I want to be super transparent and tell you I don't use any of them. I tried a couple of these in the very early days, probably years ago at this point, but to be honest with you, I, me, Jennifer, personally, I am not the target market for these things and I will tell you why in a minute. So I'm not going to base this off of my personal experience. What I did instead is that I read a lot of reviews on the bigger ones and I watched a lot of YouTube videos of people testing them out and sharing their thoughts. And for those of you who messaged me very sweetly and very kindly and say that you wish that I would put out an episode every week, I need to tell you that I watched almost eight hours of reviews for this episode alone and that is on 1.5 speed. So every week just isn't going to happen. So there you have it. Anyway, I went to the websites for each app and I read their overviews to understand what they are supposed to do. Then I read reviews not on their site to see what people really thought. I read the comments on their social media posts and I watched the videos to see them in action and now I feel quite qualified to share my thoughts. Most of them have some features in common, like closet inventory, where you take pictures of all the clothes you own, the app stores the items and then it generates outfit ideas based on what you have. Some offer body shape and or color analysis, some track how often you're wearing your clothes and give a cost per wear analysis, and some offer shopping suggestions. There's a whole host of things they claim to do. All of them are a little bit different, but most of them though start with the closet inventory as the foundation, as the basis. And for me as a user, again, Jennifer, personally, this is where they fall apart. It is not because I'm a wardrobe stylist and I know how to put outfits together, or because I never need ideas of what to wear. Those things might be true, but the real reason I am not the target market for these apps is that the process of taking photos of everything I own is just daunting. I tried this, I really did, but my ADHD brain got about 30% of my closet done and then I started doing something else. I don't know, cleaning out my closet. Scrolling TikTok I have no idea and I just didn't go back to it. So if you need your entire closet photographed and inventoried to be able to use the app and you struggle to finish a project like this, the rest is kind of a moot point. And this was a common criticism across the board that they take a lot of work to set up, sort of defeating the time savings, at least in the beginning. But if you're someone who doesn't have issues finishing things, or you have a really small wardrobe and it wouldn't take a ton of time, or you are playing the long game and you're willing to invest that upfront time, this is not a problem. They're just not quite as plug and play as maybe we would like. Another thing most of them do is create outfit combinations based on what you already own or what you own and some additional shopping suggestions. This seemed to be the feature people found most beneficial across all the apps. But I found something kind of interesting when I was watching the videos on YouTube. One thing I did was to make sure I wasn't only watching style creators reviewing the apps. I wanted people who didn't have that strong style foundation as well because I noticed that the style creators would take the idea, the outfit idea, make a few quote unquote tweaks and be like, I love this outfit. What a great idea. You know when you read a recipe review and someone gives it 5 stars but then they list all the changes they made to it and you think, well, you just gave your own recipe a five star rating because you did not make the same thing as the original. It's just like that. If the app suggests jeans, a blouse and a blazer and and you end up in a maxi skirt, T shirt and cardigan, I don't know that the app did that much for you. I mean, I guess it suggested clothes and you wore clothes, so there's that. But I'm pretty sure that without the app you wouldn't leave the house naked. You know, you need to wear clothes. From the non style creator side, I noticed a couple of things. First, there was a lot of I would never have thought to put this together. And as a stylist and as a capsule guide creator, I those are words that fill me with joy. Helping people see things, especially things they already own in a new way, is such a huge win. So I think that's a wonderful use of the apps. Anything that helps you get more mileage and more style out of your current wardrobe is great. On the other hand, though, I saw a few instances where the outfit inspo should have worked in theory, but but it didn't translate to real life. For example, there was a woman layering a T shirt under a cardigan sweater, which seems pretty straightforward, but the T shirt was kind of cropped and boxy and had wide lower cut armholes. And the cardigan was not a super oversized fit, so it made the T shirt underneath sit kind of weird. And I wanted to reach through my screen and just pull her shirt down and adjust it. Or better yet, swap it out for a tea. That was a better layering piece. Just because a T shirt should go under a cardigan doesn't mean that every T shirt works with every cardigan. I don't know if she eventually realized what was off about her outfit or if she realized anything was off about her outfit. In the video, she seemed to be going with it. I don't know. But from my experience, my vast experience working with women, I know there are people who will do or wear anything you tell them to do or wear, especially people who are worried about doing style right, about getting it right. They'll take what the authority says at face value because, well, they're the authority, so they must be right. And this is actually a huge problem. And this is a theme that's going to come up again next episode. A question I see being asked over and over at Style Coaching or just in our community is does this work? Like do these pants work with these shoes or does this top work with this skirt? And here's the thing, these are people showing us photos of the outfit in Question. We are looking at the real items on their real bodies and they're still wondering. This is not just theoretical and what these apps can do is give you ideas, give you suggestions, but what they can't do is guarantee that they will work. There are so many reasons that things don't go together in real life, even things that should go together. It's like sometimes the colors are just a little bit off, or sometimes the fabrics don't play well together or the proportions are a mismatch. I could go on and on and on. Unless you know not only how to identify but actually fix those things, the app is not going to improve your style or make it easier. Another feature of some of the AI style apps that got good reviews was wardrobe usage and cost per wear tracking. Meaning at the end of the month or the year, it tells you you wore, I don't know, 50% of the items in your closet. One of the apps has you enter the purchase price of the item when you upload the photo and when you log that item into your daily outfit tracker and it logs the wear count and calculates the cost per wear, which over time decreases as you wear that piece more. We have a couple of members who use these apps and they really like these tracking features and if your mind works that way, I think that's great. Good for you. Rock on. But I got a couple of questions first. How do you take into account how many times you've worn it already? A five year old sweater you've already worn 50 times inherently has a lower cost per wear than something new you put into your wardrobe. But my bigger question is, what are you really learning from the data? Are you learning which pieces of your wardrobe you wear most often? I can stand in my closet and tell you that in about five seconds and I bet you could too. Another question I have is what are you doing with the data? How is that knowledge helping you make better wardrobe decisions? If you discover that you are only wearing 30% of your closet like most American women, cool. Then what? Are you intentionally changing your strategy for getting dressed to increase that number? Are you asking yourself why you're only wearing 30% of your wardrobe? If a woman came to me and said my phone told me I'm only wearing a third of my clothes, I would say, huh, it sounds like you don't want to wear the majority of your wardrobe. Let's find out. Why is it that your closet doesn't wear reflect the life that you really live now? Do your clothes not fit or flatter you Are you missing key pieces which creates closet gridlock? Do you just not like your clothes? The information is only valuable if you do something with it. I think there are some cases where this could be really helpful. Like if you challenge yourself to wear everything in your wardrobe and you use an app to track it. But if you don't do anything with the numbers and it's just nice to know info. And my concern is that opportunities for deeper learning or understanding get missed because we think we've really done something when really, okay, now you just have data, who cares? It's kind of the same thing with cost per wear tracking. In my opinion, the concept of cost per wear is really good, really important when it comes to helping you make better buying decisions. You know, if you buy a pair of $20 shoes that hurt your feet so you wear them twice, that is $10 per wear. But if you buy a $200 pair of shoes that are super comfortable and you wear them a hundred times, you're at $2 per wear. That's clearly the better purchase. Even though they cost a lot more, right? The point of cost per wear is to help you make better buying decisions. And I am all about that. So great. But what numbers can't take into account is how something makes you feel. Let's say I have a pair of black pants in my wardrobe and a pair of bright pink pants. Common sense tells me that the neutral, versatile black pants are probably going to get worn more often. So even if they started out priced the same as the pink pants, the cost per wear on those black pants is going to be much, much lower. If I'm using that information to guide my buying decisions, my takeaway might be, don't buy fun pants. They're not as good of an investment. But what if those pink pants make me feel like a million bucks? What if every time I wear them, I get compliments and I feel like the best, most stylish version of myself? Which is the better deal? Then there is an X factor that simple math just can't account for. This is another case where I don't need an app to tell me which items in my closet were good investments and which weren't. And again, I bet you don't either. At a high level, the concept of cost per wear is wonderful and helpful. But I worry that getting super granular with it could discourage trying new things or discourage investing more in pieces that you just love. And those are things that are really important to personal style, too. The last feature of AI style apps that I want to touch briefly on is those that offer body shape and color analysis. In theory, this could be an absolute game changer. These are two of the things women struggle with the most when it comes to style, and if there was an easy, inexpensive, accessible solution, it could be absolutely incredible. But come on now, you know, you know it's not going to be that simple. We are going to go deep, deep, deep, deep into my issues with this one in the next episode. And I don't want to be redundant, so I'm going to leave you hanging. That's a cliffhanger. But what I will say for now is that the reviews across the board on websites, in YouTube videos, on social media all say that accuracy is a mixed bag. And we're going to talk about why that's such a big problem in our next episode. So hold that thought. And for now, let's just recap my thoughts on AI style apps. Please remember that this is recorded in spring 2026, if you're listening, in fall 2026 or beyond. First of all, hello future lady. I hope it's nice where you are. I am sure that these apps will have evolved since the time of this recording and now they probably send a drone to your house to pick out your outfits and steam them and hem your pants. I don't know. My thoughts are based on what we are working with today, which will change by next week. In the Pro column, we've got closet management, tracking and data outfit ideas and people appear to have fun with them, which counts for a lot. Style should be fun. If it's not, you're doing it wrong. In the con column, there is missing context, variable accuracy, and kind of a so what when it comes to the data you get. My overall opinion is this. They can be a fun, helpful tool when used correctly. Can they make style easier? Yeah, maybe. I can see the outfit suggestions being really helpful for a lot of women, but can they actually improve your style long term? Probably not. Giving you outfit ideas each day makes it easier to get dressed in the moment, but it can't replace the skills you learn from picking a random top out of your closet and challenging yourself to make five outfits with it. That builds your lifelong style skills, which is what I and this show are all about. We're not about the quick fix of looking cute in one outfit for one day, but rather the lifelong skills of being able to figure out how to make better buying decisions and how to put together outfits that work and how to fix them when they don't. In the end, I think it all depends on what your goals are and how you're using the tools as a support and a companion to actual skills and knowledge that you have. Yes, as a replacement for the skills and knowledge. No, they're not ready to do that. One thought that I kept coming back to when I was putting this episode together is the concept of easy, cheap and good. And this might be something you've heard me talk about on the show before, but if you haven't, here's a quick recap. When it comes to pretty much anything like planning a party or going on vacation, or in this case, AI style apps, we want things to be easy, cheap and good. The reality, though, is that you can only have two of the three, and the one that you don't choose is what you're not going to get. For example, you can hire a party planner to throw an amazing event and you don't have to lift a finger from planning to cleanup. That is easy and it's going to be good, but you know it's not going to be cheap. Or you can cook all the food yourself and you can do all the prep work and clean up yourself and you can hand make all of the decorations to save you money and and you'll end up with a party that is good and cheap, but it's definitely not easy. Or finally, you can buy a pack of balloons at the dollar store and you can use plain paper plates and napkins you stole from McDonald's and you can serve tap water and ramen. This is cheap and it's easy, but it's probably not that good. The thing is, there's no right or wrong answer here. It's just priorities. The value in this is knowing what you want and what you're going to have to give up to get that inherently these AI style apps promise or are meant to be easy and cheap, so what are they not going to be? I'm going to let you fill in that blank. Your homework for this episode is to check out the apps. I don't want your takeaway from this episode to be Jen, say Style app bad only Jennifer Goode. That is not the case at all. I just want you to be able to think critically about them and know what their strengths and limitations are so you can decide if they'll actually make your style easier and or better. Here are three questions to keep in mind as you're checking them out. First and foremost, are you willing to do the setup? Be honest with yourself. If you're like me and you won't follow through it's not going to work. It's that simple. Along with that though, will you use it consistently? Because spending all the time photographing and uploading is a waste if you're not going to try the outfits it gives you, or you're not going to consistently log every outfit you wear. Question number two do you want outfit ideas or do you want to understand what really works? If I could get my act together to input my wardrobe more outfit ideas, it might be fun. It could encourage me to think about my wardrobe in new ways, and that is never, ever, ever a bad thing. But these apps depend on you already knowing an outfit works or doesn't and why, if that's the part you struggle with. These apps aren't going to teach you that they make outfits based on what should theoretically work, but they depend on you to get your look that outfit over the finish line. Something to consider if you say you want outfit ideas is this. Do you really like most of your wardrobe? Because if you don't have ingredients to make outfits you like, the app isn't going to magically change that. Like if your wardrobe is heavy on basics and muted neutral colors and simple jewelry and you're hoping the app will help you make exciting, bold outfits, it won't. It can't. You have to find an app that is more focused on shopping than remixing your current wardrobe. And that's not a bad thing. It's just knowing what your goals are, what you're working with, and then choosing the tool that will help you get there. Final question to ask yourself if you're choosing an app based on its amazing data collection abilities, ask yourself how you will realistically and strategically use that information. How will knowing that you only wear 20% of your wardrobe change your shopping or getting dressed habits? What will be different going forward? Knowing the cost per wear of each item? I love data as much as the next nerd. I really do. But if you are spending all the time it takes to set up your closet and track every single thing you wear every day just so you can know you wear your jeans more often than you wear a sequin midi skirt, is that time well spent? I don't know you, but I would be willing to bet you wear jeans more often than sequin midi skirts. Just call it a hunch. As I'm thinking about this, I think it might be fun to estimate how much of your wardrobe you think you wear and then track it and find out how off were you. And most of us probably wear a whole lot less than we think we do. But there again, how much effort would it take to test and prove that hypothesis? More than I'm willing to spend, I will tell you that. So have fun playing with these apps over the next couple of weeks. Get a free trial, test them out. I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you use them? Do you like them? How are they making your style easier or better? Follow me on Instagram at Everyday Style with Jen and let me know. I cannot wait to hear what you think. Like I said, we are going to pick up this conversation in our next episode talking about where my experience with AI and style started with good old chat GPT. We're going to dig into how tools like this do when it comes to making style easier and better. Are they better than the apps? Are they worse? I have so many thoughts on this subject. So very, very many. Can't wait to share them with you. Foreign that is it for this episode of the Everyday Style School. Thank you for spending time with me today. If you're ready for actual, easier, better style, come take my free workshop Style Made simple where you will discover why style has felt so hard and how to make it easy for life. You can sign up@freestyleclass.com or through the link in the show notes. I will see you next time. And until then, stay, stay stylish.