Wardrobe App for iPhone That Builds Your Closet for You

When Apple opened the App Store on July 10, 2008, it launched with around five hundred apps. Closet apps arrived not long after, and nearly all of them made the same request: take a photo of every piece of clothing you own. It was a reasonable ask for a new phone with a camera. It was also the reason most of them were deleted within a week.

 

Confession #1: I have downloaded a wardrobe app for iPhone at least once a year since college, usually in January, and I have never once finished the setup. I get through the tops, lose steam at the trousers and give up entirely at shoes.

 

Phones got better cameras, but the problem was never the camera. It was the hours. So the real question for any wardrobe app for iPhone is how little of that work it asks you to do.

Phia's setup starts with Gmail. Continue with Gmail and Phia reads retailer order confirmations, receipts and shipping emails, then turns each purchase into a closet item with its photo, brand, size and color. Purchases appear in the closet within seconds, and the sync keeps running as new orders arrive.

 

Instant camera roll sync adds the clothes you have already photographed, and Phia cleans up every item so the closet looks tidy and consistent. For the pieces that are left, you can search the web for an item from inside the closet, or add it yourself.

 

I compared how different apps handle setup in The Best Wardrobe App Is the One You Keep Using. The short version: an app that fills itself is the only kind most of us will still be using in March.

The second thing a good wardrobe app for iPhone needs is to stay current without effort. Phia works as a Safari extension on iPhone and a Chrome extension on desktop, and anything you buy through the Phia extension at supported stores lands in your closet at checkout.

 

That same extension is Phia's shopping side. It compares prices across more than 220,000 sites, new and secondhand, finds coupons at checkout and can alert you to price drops. So the app that holds your closet is also the one checking whether you are about to overpay or buy something you already own.

 

A practical test for any wardrobe app: buy one thing online this week and see if it appears in the closet without you doing anything. If you have to add it by hand, the closet will be out of date within a month.

Once the closet is in, Phia does the styling. The Outfits tab has Generate outfit, which builds complete looks from scratch, Style from one item, which builds an outfit around a single piece, and Suggested outfits for you. In the For you tab, Styled by Phia sends a new outfit idea every day once you have added five tops and five bottoms, and it can factor in the weather if you add your city.

 

Style analysis reads the whole closet and describes your style, with your top colors, vibes and brands. Collections group pieces by occasion, season or trip, including a Trip collection that builds a weather-aware packing list.

 

Virtual try-on takes a photo of you and a product image and generates a picture of you wearing it. What I would skip: treating try-on as a size guide. It is a vibe check, good for seeing whether a color or shape belongs in your wardrobe, not whether it will fit.

The wardrobe app for iPhone I have finally kept is the one that never asked me for a weekend. It fills itself, keeps itself current and does something useful with the closet once it has it.

 

Download the free Phia app, tap Continue with Gmail and let the closet fill while you make a coffee. Turn on the Safari extension so purchases land in the closet as you shop, and add the Chrome extension on your laptop.

 

Then open Style analysis and see what it says about you. The App Store started with five hundred apps. It took a while for one of them to do the boring part for us.