Show HN: Twelve70 - Men's outfit generator and closet management | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Twelve70 - Men's outfit generator and closet management

twelve70.com

158 pointsrubanraj120 comments

I consider myself a male fashion fan, not bleeding edge but I spend a few hundred to a few thousand on clothes per year. Generally I think the interface is good (other than the latency that others have pointed out). But the outfit recommendations seem quite bad/nonsensical (sorry for bluntness):

For a denim trucker jacket (a fairly common outerwear in many menswear lines/people's closets) it recommended: One outfit with Sand colored shoes + Khakis (no contrast between shoes/pants...) Two outfits that had no shirts but another jacket (eg a red track jacket...)

Its not all bad, one example outfit generated from a plain white crwwneck sweater was clever - olive flight jacket + orange trousers + white mocassins.

I wonder how you've built the recommendation engine. Is it using a dataset to generate these (maybe include a real photo of the look?) Or is it generating them based on color/style rules? Or (what Id hope) a combination (learn rules from a lookbook dataset that can give general tips then also fall vs spring tips).

Either way, thanks for sharing - this is a fun tool to play with but it feels like I'm searching for needles in a haystack right now.

Even if it worked well, it hard to believe using it would be less effort than figuring things out on your own. Men who care about what they look like are probably going to have decent instincts about what to wear. Men who don’t care, well, they’re not going to try.

I think there's a third very specific category of "men who care but don't know how, but they love making systems out of things to help solve their problems." You might find one or two of these kinds on Hacker News.

Totally agree & I started in this category so I can sympathize. I spent more $ & time in dressing rooms than I care to admit to figure out what specific outfit combinations worked and how different brands fit. Having something like this that worked well would've been an amazing starting point, and I was hoping that Pinterest's visual search feature would eventually become something like this (as that'd get me to actually use Pinterest). I think more men would dress well if it weren't so hard!

So we just need Garanimals for grown ups?

There's men who care because society cares but don't want to spend all the effort gaining the instincts themselves. Probably also useful for people who come from, for example, poor families and never had guidance on such things growing up so would need to devote extra effort to gain the instincts.

Well, I think what they need is to look at a blog like https://putthison.com/. It’s easier to read a few articles on there than to try to use some janky app everyday.

You must be confused, they said they want to look good...

You can probably get this integrated into some other lower friction point than the phone/browser, such as a smart display or assistant. Could also be useful for shopping to make sure the person actually has the right clothes to make the combos. Problem is, until they crack the combos, there is no product.

I for one would love to be well dressed, but I don't know how.

We exist, but it's not something you exactly brag about :)

Start reading fashion magazines and tear out the pictures of stuff you like. Then when you see something you like at the mall or Macy's, get it. If there's stuff in your closet you don't wear (or don't like to wear), fold it and put it in storage and if you haven't needed it for 6-12 months, give it away and replace it with a garment of the same type that you like.

Read through r/malefashionadvice and their wiki, they have a bunch of info on how to improve your style. Specifically, they have threads every day called What Are You Wearing Today which has people take pictures of themselves and what they're wearing specifically (brands, name of clothing SKU) which you can then pick up to buy if you like it, or find alternatives for it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/wiki

white mocassins are silly. They would get dirty in a second.

Yeah, I had one option for a blue gingham oxford short come back with tan chinos...

... and grey slides (sandals/flipflops).

Hmm.

I've been recommended a green zip-up hoodie, white corduroy jacket and yellow drawstring shorts. This wouldn't be my first pick.

This is pretty common in novice machine learning models -- not explicitly building in constraints and invariants, i.e., "inductive bias".

Seems like a huge oversight to allow outfits with no shirts but two jackets, for example.

Get with the times, man!

Same impression here. Great UI, but weird outfit suggestion. My first test resulted in:

- Black dress shirt + Black pleated shorts + Off white slides

I'm so far out of the target market for this that I don't even know what slides are. (Even after googling, I'm still only about 80% sure.)

here are outfits based on off-white slip-on shoes.

https://www.twelve70.com/outfits?category1=footwear&item1=sl...

Totally agree with this. A good starting point might have been some of the looks on reddit's malefashionadvice (or something similar). The basic bastard, for instance, is a a great capsule wardrobe https://amp.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/5da1dc/t...

That said, excellent idea and well done on executing and making it look pretty!

Thank you! It's still has alot of room for improvement. And we've gotten alot of great feedback from r/mfa which we have been implementing since our first post there.

Great stuff! Look forward to seeing where it goes!

Even with a pretty basic starting point - a blue polo, got some really odd recommendations, like khaki cargo pants with charcoal kiltie loafers.

I started with a blue polo, and got burgundy coaches jacket (ok..) + navy cargo shorts (err..) + light pink low wallabies (which are apparently a kind of boat shoes).

The pink shoes might work with the polo, but not with the burgundy jacket.

I'm having mostly the same experience. I've always considered myself a bit odd because I enjoy wearing different "nice" clothes. When I was younger I struggled because, ironically, I HATE shopping. But then came the internet.

Anyway, the site is pretty cool because it opens my mind up to new ideas. But I had a lot of suggested outfits that were the same color of different pieces (no contrast as you said) and multiple jackets.

Wonder if it "learns" my style over time? I'd like to see this continue to grow. And maybe instead of the schedule feature, it could give me links to buy. I imagine monetization isn't far off if there's decent traffic.

Looks interesting -- however much of the app does not work if www.googletagmanager.com is blocked. Is that necessary to the functionality or just an oversight?

I encountered the same issue. I refuse to whitelist blatant third-party trackers to use a service, so I checked it and then immediately closed the tab.

Not only that but it makes sharing the website a chore. Half the people you share it to will complain that it's not working at all... and try telling someone "here's a random link, make sure to disable your anti-trackers to visit it!"

Do general tracking blockers and mainstream lists block GTM though? I use a massive combined listed on a pi-hole so not sure which one it comes from. Just curious as there are, theoretically, non-invasive, non-ad tracking use cases for GTM.

I think Google ran out of good will/benefit of the doubt when it comes to tracking tech a long time ago. AFAIK, every blocker tool I use on any platform, which probably includes most of the well-known ones by now, will block GTM in the default configuration.

If a site doesn't work properly with GTM blocked, legitimate use case or not, personally I normally just move on. Unless I have a compelling reason to need that site, I won't make any attempt to work around it or change my blocker settings.

The only Google property I'm aware of that isn't routinely blocked by these kinds of tools now is Google Fonts, and I think some of them even block that by default now.

GTM is usually the wedge that marketing uses to pry its way into a site's code without engineering involvement, and thus blocking GTM will often prevent a huge list of other trackers, ads, and late-loading content changes from being loaded.

I'm running it in a private tab with all tracking protection and ublock off, and it is still slow. Slashdotted, maybe?

Definitely an oversight. I'll fix it right away. My apologies.

Thanks! Now you’ll just have the big traffic bump to deal with (:

Late on this...but what are you using to block googletagmanager?

While cool, I feel like if you're a guy who finds this service useful, you'd have trouble with the hard part of finding the concrete article of clothing that reifies the plan and knowing that it still looks good. As that's really the whole hard part of matching clothes.

There's a massive chasm between the abstract pictures of the clothes and what you could end up wearing.

I think it would be more helpful to let men select actual shots of real clothes with price tags that they can buy (clothes they might already have), and then generate images of the accompanying clothes along with with prices that they can buy. Much nicer looking at actual merchandise than an <svg>.

When I was in my early 20s and clueless about what looked good, I really just wanted to spin a "Next Model" button until a guy had an outfit I liked and then purchase it. For example, I would go on clothing sites and shop by looking at the male models. I precisely lacked the taste to go from these abstract <svg>s to concrete clothes. I wanted to see an actual look and just buy it or parts of it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/wiki

Having real world examples is on our roadmap. We understand that people want to see more relatable images, but keeping it analog to begin with simplifies the process.

I enjoyed this app.

Features that occurred to me that I'd want if I were to create an account:

can I mark which clothing options I own vs don't?

For items I don't own, could my account hold my measurements to give appropriate Amazon shopping links (with affiliates to this site probably) so if I want an outfit I just hit 'buy'?

Can I get 5 outfits generated for a workweek, with each of the 5 ensuring they are not reusing tops/bottoms back to back on same day?

Yep, you can add items you own in the closet, then you can generate outfits with only those items.

Re: measurements...that's on our roadmap.

That can definitely be implemented without much effort.

My suggestion; defer the signup.

Just create a shell account and let people start creating outfits. The more work they do, the more likely they are to want to “Save”, i.e. create an account.

I wonder if you have stats on how many sessions click “Closet”, see the signup page and don’t click through.

Let prospective users actually do something with your app, and as long as the session is unregistered keep an obvious button to Save/Register on screen.

I just switched over from the 'shell account' for the closet, to what it is now. Just testing the waters, but thanks for the advice. I'll look at the stats and see which works better.

I consider this a funny story. You might consider it just sad...

Preface: my style could be considered wanting when it comes to picking out my own clothes. Many years ago, I did a complete refresh of my clothes because nothing fit and everything was well-worn. So I took a buddy whom I considered stylish to Nordstrom's and he, along with the salesperson, took what I gave them as my budget and general requirements to pick out a complete wardrobe. They did so. However, there were so many different items and colors and I didn't know how to mix and match. So my friend devised the following list which I still keep:

Matching:

Yellow Polo goes everything but black (blue and mocha best)

Blue check goes with gray and stone (blue and stone best)

Dark tan herringbone goes with black, camel, tan, stone (olive and mocha ok)

Camel (shiney) goes with tan, black, mocha, and olive

Camel (short-sleeve button down) goes with mocha, olive, and black (tan is average)

Eggplant/Plum button down goes with blue, black, gray, camel, mocha, and tan

Taupe goes with tan, stone, black, and camel (not blue)

Purple goes with tan, stone, black, camel, blue, and mocha (not olive)

Blue/Gray (slate) t-shirt goes with tan, black, and navy (stone is best and camel is ok)

Sky blue t-shirt goes with everything but olive (tan and stone are best, black is ok)

Burgundy t-shirt goes with everything (olive best)

Olive/Green t-shirt goes with stone, tan, black, camel, and mocha (olive is ok)

Black pants always black belt

Tan (with black) -> black

Tan (with lighter/softer) -> brown

Yellow -> brown

Tan goes with either

Herringbone goes with either

Green -> brown

Mocha will almost always wear brown (except if black pants, then either)

Black and blue pants will be black shoes except for light shirt (e.g., yellow)

Stone will more often go with brown except with purple and black shirt (though not necessary)

Treat gray as black

Socks always match pants or darker

Earth tone pants with black socks ok in bind

Don't mix belt and shoes

Served me many years. Sadly, none of those clothes fit me anymore. So here I am again...

Oh man, that's alot of hardcoded rules to follow. They seem to make sense.

Would it help if we suggested capsule closets to guide you? For example closet#1 has a set number of items for each category which you can just click and buy in your size and have added to the site closet. Then you can go and generate outfits from everything you own...?

Probably not and, candidly, I'm not sure I'd use the app. Putting aside that my build is described as athletic and it's typically hard for me to find clothes that fit properly (e.g., larger shoulders/chest/biceps, small waist), for me to feel comfortable buying anything, I'd want someone to get to know my personality and nuances (e.g., overheats easily), make recommendations that I try on and model in front of them to get opinions (e.g., "yes, that works"; "next!"), and help me gain a better understanding of WHY something looks good vs. doesn't. I think it'd be hard for me to get that from someone other than a friend and not being in person (a video chat might work but I have doubts). I'm highly unlikely to rely on an algorithm when it comes to matching/style.

You should plot this advice on a colour-wheel - try and form your own conclusions from this rigid set of rules. You'll find a simpler, smaller set of rules is guiding them (which can be somewhat unique to your tastes). Also as an artist I would advise paying attention to both hue and saturation when looking at outfits. Usually things look bad because people put too many brightly saturated colours next to each other.

This is really neat. Tried a few variations and the recommendations are not too shabby.

Personally, I've solved the "what to wear" problem by simplifying my wardrobe to just a few basic items, each item available in several safe colors that are easy to mix-and-match. In the past I agonized over what to wear. Now I can get dressed in the pre-dawn darkness and come out looking alright.

Seems to be getting hugged to death.

From the brief amount of time playing with it, it seems to be rather basic in it's outfit generation.

For example I picked an orange tennis sweater. And it recommended black full zip jacket (to go over the orange tennis sweater? so basically they recommend you not wear a orange tennis sweater?), hot pink trousers and white espadrilles.

So it seems to match color with a random item (hot pink trousers and a black top? and white shoes?). The shoes are also summer shoes, and if you are wearing a sweater with a zip up jacket over top you probably need more then a single ply fabric shoe with rope soles.

Second time it picked a brown fleece jacket to go over your orange sweater, with khaki pants, and light blue tennis sneakers. First why would you ever wear a fleece jacket over top of a tennis sweater, usually tennis sweaters are knit so you are wearing sheep on top of sheep, unless you are playing in -20c probably a bit excessive.

Moral of the story is it seems to be more of a random clothing articles mixed with colour combinations then an actual outfit generator.

You can set your weather and it will provide more fitting outfits. If you don't set it, the outfits that generate are based on random weather conditions.

define random? do you mean that it doesn't take weather into account?

To save us black t-shirt fans some time, here's a quick link...

https://www.twelve70.com/outfits?category1=top&item1=t-shirt...

It seems to be pretty random. I clicked that link and all of the outfits were black t-shirt with different colour cargo shorts and random shoes like white tassle moccasins.

Then I refreshed the page and the suggestions were much less whacky.

it recommended me brown shoes, pants and jacket. I think I'd look like a plastic army man if I followed this site's advice.

Back in my day, we used to call "closet management" and "outfit generator" a "wife".

Mate, you can't say that.

Are you saying that your wife has never said "Are you really going to wear that?"

Looks like a great start. I worked in this space for a couple years with Cladwell [0] and would be happy to chat with you on what worked and didn't. Definitely came with it's own scaling issues as our users would add 400 items from their closets, generating tens of millions of outfits!

[0] https://cladwell.com

Would love to chat! Can you We've been looking at cladwell too, their app is cool, but we noticed that its catered more towards women and we've had user's mention this as well.

Send me an e-mail at chrisridenour on gmail!

For the international version, I recommend including non-upper-middle-class-white-westerner clothes. Kilt, caftan,dhoti-kurta, pheran, kimono, etc.

Also missing: hats! Where are all the hats? And belts?? You can't wear a random belt with any old pants and shoes. And watch???

From a fashion perspective I would also put a big yellow warning sign over the cargo pants/shorts. Unless you're a carpenter, a photographer, or some other working person who needs to carry more than a wallet and a phone, no men should be wearing those.

From a sample selection of jeans and polo it recommended to me an orange polo shirt, a burgundy hooded down jacket, dark denim jeans, and yellow velcro sneakers. So probably there's some bugs to work out still. :)

Had to start somewhere, we'll branch out when the time comes, thanks for the suggestions though.

Accessories are in the works, don't worry, we haven't forgotten about them.

Yes, cargo pants/shorts are very functional pieces, but they can also be worn in a casual settings as well. Some pants come with slimmer streamlined pockets that aren't necessarily meant to hold large items.

It'll be more relevant if you add items you already own to the closet and generate outfits using those. Fashion is always somewhat bias, generating without having things in your closet will give you a ton of options that might fall outside your realm of acceptable fashion.(But yes, there are a few bugs scurrying around that need squashing)

To anyone wanting to improve their fashion sense, read through r/malefashionadvice and their wiki, they have a bunch of info on how to improve your style. Specifically, they have threads every day called What Are You Wearing Today which has people take pictures of themselves and what they're wearing specifically (brands, name of clothing SKU) which you can then pick up to buy if you like it, or find alternatives for it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/wiki

Pet peeve: style != fashion

Style can't really be captured in simple rules, but is easy to recognize. You know when you see a stylish person, even if you can't put your finger on why that is.

Fashion is a vehicle to sell you more crap. It's a maze of ever-changing rules that you're supposed to navigate or risk a fashion faux-pas.

If the advice comes in the form of rules like "always leave the bottom button of a waistcoat undone", run away.

If it's more like,"an off the shoulder design is more flattering for larger sizes", pay attention.

But also: you can wear whatever you want. The difference between a faux-pas and a bold fashion statement is confidence and (sadly) attractiveness of the wearer.

So wear what makes you feel good/confident. That's your best investment.

That is indeed why I said style and not fashion. MFA has a few different styles you can choose from, but they're not all the styles available, of course there are infinite, at least as many as there are humans on this planet. Nevertheless, some styles can still be learned as basics before being transformed into your own style.

Didn't mean to criticize your input. The combination of fashion in subreddit name and style in your own wording triggered my pet peeve, that's all.

Leave that last button undone, though.

I like the idea, but the illustrations are too basic. I think something with more depth and artistic style is required. Right now a lot of them look more or less identical.

Real world examples would be great as well.

Should be ShowHN:

Awesome app.

Really, really, slow on my end.

It was getting the hug of death that I didn't expect. I upped the resources now so it should be much faster.

+1 much faster now. Thank you .

Would love to see this link to similar outfits on Instagram (or whatever the kids uses these days for fashion)

Two bits:

- your terms of service says that it's the user's responsibility to maintain a backup. Do you actually offer a data download service, or is this just legal fluff that you copied?

- when someone uses one or two seed items to look for outfits, and you don't know that they have other items in their closet already, you could (and probably should) offer to link them to a site that sells that stuff. Don't offer to sell them a seed item or something that you know that they already own.

- Thanks for catching that. It was copied for the most part, and I must've missed that section.

- We are connected with one retailer and working to connect with more. Some of the items in the outfits have a shopping bag icon which indicated that there are items available to shop.

The "Show Labels" on the color options is a nice touch. I am colorblind and was clicking on purple instead of blue, etc., until I saw that feature. In fact, since this is targeted towards men, who are colorblind more than women (a quick google shows 1 in 12 men vs 1 in 200 females), it could be really helpful.

Great app! It's very clean and aesthetic will no doubt build trust in your user demographic.

idk why but every wife beater combo makes me chuckle https://www.twelve70.com/outfits?category1=top&item1=tanktop...

I got a red oxford shirt, purple fleece vest, navy jeans and navy hiking shoes. Has AI gone too far?

This is fantastic. 90% of my wardrobe is shorts and t-shirts (basically my daily outfit since growing up in South Florida 30-40 years ago). But, I have thought on occasion that I would like to upscale my wardrobe. I just have no idea how to go about it. At least this website could tell me what might go well together. It's a start.

I'm the same. I'm wearing a non-brand polo shirt and jeans most days.

Honestly, I'd go to a good mens clothing store and talk to them about your goals. Don't buy too much at once, try to stay fairly classic/timeless at first until you figure out what you like.

I can't do it because I'm too much of a tightwad to spend $180+ on a shirt, or $1,000 on a blazer, which is what the average is at the store I'm thinking of. But they will work with you, get your measurements, and do alterations so that the stuff you buy really fits well (which is a big part of what makes an outfit look really good -- it's more than just the right combination of colors).

This is fun to mess around with. It would be nice if you could select "climate" (like daily weather or even season) as an additional input. It keeps adding puffy vests and jackets over an already warm shirt. Maybe loosen up the top/outerwear distinction? e.g. a flannel shirt could also serve as outerwear.

You can set your weather if you click the gear icon on the top right. If you set it to 'use current' it will update the weather every time you're on the site. We're working on the layering aspect which will have flannels and cardigans as outerwear layers.

Cool, I missed that :) The temperature setting does seem to make it stop picking puffy jackets, although it's still coming up with some pretty heavy outfits. I'm sure that's just a matter of simple tweaking.

Will keep an eye on this, it's nice even if it picks some crazy outfits. At least it gets you thinking outside the box.

Definitely alot of tweaking ahead of us. We're working on a layering function that should complement the outfits better for the weather.

It becomes more useful when you add items to the closet. The general generator, although curated, does throw some out of box ideas.

Seems like a fun idea, but for some reason it seems to hide a bunch of second choices? E.g. I was seeing if I could get a black tank + black leather jacket + black jeans + black combats (what I wear daily) and it wont let me :(

Perhaps it's not really geared toward niche/subculture fashion?

Fantastic! Unlike a lot of similar apps, this actually generated decent enough outfits. The pairings were good, especially the color combinations.

I do believe that the shoe suggestions are uniformly bad - sockless moccasins with camo pants is not a good look!

But for most people, I would say it's a great start

Fashion is always going to have its bias'. The algorithm does need some tweaking. But once you have your closet filled with the items you own, it will be more useful to you.

Some of the recommendations don’t make a lot of sense (fashion or otherwise —- a hoodie, sport coat, and shorts?) but the idea is killer and it’s fun to play around with! Would love to see more of this after tuning the recommendations. :)

Keep an eye out for v2 in about a month ;)

Very very nice PWA, it feels like a native app.

This would serve as a great example to people, thank you!

Thanks! It's definitely been a big learning curve for that.

nit: I can think of 1 brand that has numbers in its name: 7-11 (and not a western brand). I haven't actually looked at hard data, but my guess is you decrease your odds of success by having a number in your brand name.

7-11 is famously an American brand.

The Japanese bought it, and admittedly they've taken it further than the USA ever did.

Neither 23andMe, nor Forever 21, seem to be doing poorly. Don't think this one is a show stopper.

It looks good to me! One suggestion I did not see was to be able to add hair color and complexion. Some of the suggestions I had I would not have gone with because of mismatch with my skin & hair.

That's a bit advanced for the stage it is at now, but it is on our roadmap. We realize that skin tone and hair color play a big role with the colors of clothes, and plan to integrate it down the road.

Someone actually built the closet program from Clueless![1]

[1] https://youtu.be/XNDubWJU0aU

I cannot add any outerwear to my closet because the menu at the bottom completely covers that option if you’ve already added pants and shirts.

The design of this website can do with a little cleanup.

Good catch, I've been using it as PWA for so long, I miss things little things like this in the browser experience. Pushed out a fix so that should be sorted now.

Thanks! It works now.

It's a great time to be putting out the alpha version of this -- only has to handle array[1] item of each of clothing type as you sit in front of your monitor at home!

Nice UI, looks straightforward to monetize. Need an investor?

Thanks!

We're open to discussing it. Do you have an email we can contact you at?

Sure! No pressure.

I don't want to post my real email here (spam reasons), but reach out to me at rkhnews@trashmail.com and we can connect. That temporary address should be good for a couple weeks. Will also send you a note to the contact email linked on your website.

Colorblind people would be a good target market. Two people in my family are colorblind, and picking out things that match can be a challenge for them.

I gave you a code review after you posted on Reddit, a while ago.

I'm happy to see you're still hustling this, and let me know if you want that second review.

Cheers!

Absolutely! I'll take any help.

Send me an email info at twelve70 dot com.

Thanks!

Okay but link me to the items on Amazon via a referral so I can actually buy it - I don't have "yellow velcro sneakers". Yet.

I clicked 'select bottom' and then it went to infinite loop...trying to think if it means something :)

Did it break? Web site loads up but doesn’t seem to be working on mobile safari.

It's getting the hug of death...I'm upping the resources

I am not wearing jeans with a red sweater, Green jacket and pink shoes.

I do have to admit, some of the outfits could be a bit more fashion forward with the way the algorithm is setup right now. But if you were to add items to your closet and generate outfits, you would get results more towards your taste. Using it without a closet and limited preference settings acts more of an idea bank.

This is fun, but the fashion police descend undeterred

haha, didn't realize there were so many qualified ones here. It definitely requires some tweaks, glad you enjoy it.

- Burgundy athletic shorts

- Light pink long-sleeve henley

- Khaki duffle coat

- Black penny loafers

....that shouldn't be happening.

Did you do the sketches yourself?

Yes, we did.

Does not work on iPhone

give it another shot. The resources were too low for the amount of traffic.

Sick app. Big fan

Thanks! Glad you enjoy it.

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