App that tells you where a stranger got their outfit

MOST women will admit that they have looked at someone in the street and wondered where their outfit came from. Now online retailer Asos has developed a mobile phone app that allows you to find the item. Users surreptitiously photograph the clothes and a search tool finds them online. Asos sifts through 85,000 items and presents customers with clothes that are either the same or strikingly similar. Here LUCY HOLDEN puts the app to the test.

A BLONDE woman in a little black dress and zip-up rain mac is shooting me a strange look across a wet pavement in central London.

I’ve been busted. This is a very awkward moment. I was trying to take a photo of her on my iPhone without her noticing, but clearly I’ve failed.

It’s an irritation that must be common place to celebrities when out and about. But this poor unsuspecting woman is no superstar, and I’m no stalker. She’s a 51-year-old lawyer from London called Marie Van Der Zyl who’s popped out for a spot of shopping. But I like the look of her snazzy fur boots and jacket and want to know where she bought them.

While previously my only options would be to boldly stride up and ask, or do a bit of internet research with my stealthily taken photograph, now there’s an app for that. Launched today by fashion website Asos, in theory it’s the end of fashion envy, an end to the dreaded - and very un-British - thought of chasing someone down in the street to ask them where they bought their shoes.

In theory, it should also be very sim- ple. After downloading the Asos app for free from your smartphone, you take a picture of an item of clothing you’ve seen someone wearing in the street and let the app either identify it for you, or find similar-looking garments on the Asos website.

While the online fashion retailer sell their own brand of clothes on the site, they also sell high street labels including Whistles, French Connection and Ted Baker, as well as vintage fashion, so the suggestions are varied and you get up to 100 with each search.

If you like any of the alternatives it suggests, you click, enter your size and card details and it could be on your doorstep as little as 24 hours later. It’s instant gratification for consumers: the fashion equivalent of Uber, Tinder and Deliveroo for people who want as little human interaction as possible. With a few clicks we can buy someone’s outfit without having to speak to them.

It should also be a way of getting an outfit you like on the cheap. If you saw someone food shopping in Stella McCartney, for example, or walking their dog in Dior and took a picture, the app would show you a variety of cheaper alternatives. It’s the equivalent of taking a picture of a book in Waterstones, so you can get it cheaper on Amazon later. The problem is that the results are rather hit and miss. Not one of the random searches I did during my experiment identified the item exactly. But then the person would have to be wearing something they’d bought very recently, and therefore still in stock, so it’s hardly surprising.

The £25 black Asos rain mac it suggests I buy to look like Marie is very similar. When I ask Marie where she got it from, she tells me it’s ‘an old maternity mac from Mamas and Papas’ she just threw on to brave the rain, and seeing as I’m not pregnant but would still like an alternative, their suggestion seems a good alternative. Then again it’s a plain black rain mac, so it would be hard to go wrong (although several options for men’s macs do seem a little insulting to Marie’s style).

The app also seems thrown when it comes to coats, losing the ability to pick out any other part of the outfit, which isn’t helpful on a wet day when everyone is covered up. Tayla Lansdown, an 18-yearold sales assistant from Jigsaw in London, is wearing one of her shop’s £270 pacific blue oval coats – but I’m more interested in the dress underneath. I have to ask her to take the coat off so the app can get a decent look. Another awkward moment. It’s damp and chilly, but she kindly obliges and a floral £119 Whistles dress and £30 Liquorish alternative the app comes up with both look great.

Having worked in fashion for around a year, Tayla thinks there’s a definite place for the app.

‘I see women in shoes and jackets I’d love to own all the time but I hardly ever go up to them. It’s easy to get shy in real life, and it feels intrusive asking, so an app like this is a brilliant idea. Sometimes people come into the shop and say they saw someone wearing a dress they loved in the street and they want the same one. They only know because they’ve had the guts to ask them – but that’s very rare because it’s intimidating to go up to somebody.’

While testing the app it becomes clear this unwillingness to talk to strangers could make it invaluable – if you can be stealthy enough. And it does feel slightly creepy.

But not everyone takes it the wrong way. Brimingham student Poppy Willis, 21, says: ‘If a stranger took a picture of my outfit in the street I’d think, “God, I look must look great today”. Unless they looked like a stalker, that is.’

Fashion buyer Aiman Alzakova, 32, from Kazakhstan, isn’t so sure: ‘I’d find someone taking a picture of me in the street very strange – unless it was fashion week.’

‘It feels intrusive to ask, so the idea is brilliant’