WIWT.com Website & App Launches

Sept. 12, 2011 by andy Client Projects

LONDON 12th September 2011: This week sees the launch of a new social network – WIWT (that’s web-speak for ‘What I Wore Today’). This new site, supported by a free iPhone app, will launch on Thursday the 15th of September 2011 – just in time for the start of London Fashion Week. WIWT will allow anyone to upload photos of their outfits and share them with the world. Users are encouraged to tag the garments they wear in their photos, then other users can click through from these tags to buy the garments from the relevant retailers.

The site has been founded by 24 year old fashion blogger Poppy Dinsey. Poppy started a daily outfit blog as a New Year’s Resolution on January 1st 2010 and 18 months later Poppy was still uploading a different outfit each day and the blog was getting 250,000 visitors per month: “I started the blog as a bit of a personal challenge to make me wear more of the clothes I already owned, but within a few weeks of my first post I was being sent pictures of other people’s outfits and they were asking to be featured on the site. It wouldn’t have made sense to have the odd guest post, but I quickly realised there was a demand for other people to be able to join in the fun. The idea for the social network was born and now it’s finally ready to show the world.”

Poppy teamed up with Shoreditch design agency Caffeinehit to build the site and iPhone app and the site has been in closed beta testing for the past month: “The response to the beta site has been overwhelming. We’ve had thousands of people on the waiting list for a beta invite and over 1,900 outfits have already been uploaded from Surrey to Stockholm to San Francisco. We’ve even had a pug upload his stylish outerwear, we assume with the help of his owner,” Poppy comments.

As well as showing off their own outfits and using the site and app to diarise their daily wardrobe creations, users can browse all of the other outfits on the site to discover new styles, discover new brands and click out to buy the garments they fall in love with. In a similar way to Twitter, users can ‘follow’ other users whose style appeals to them and they can give outfits gold stars to add them to their favourites folder. The current top trending brands on the site are Topshop, H&M, Primark, New Look and Zara.

“WIWT certainly isn’t the first outfit sharing site, but we’ve built this site with accessibility in mind. Users can award the outfits they like gold stars, but we haven’t gone down the route of rating outfits out of ten as this can open the flood gates to cattiness. And we’re not asking our users to pose on a disused railway line in their grandmother’s antique lace tablecloth which they’ve fashioned into a natty dress, we’re happy with photos of tracksuits taken on a camera phone in the mirror. In fact, over half of the outfits currently on the site have been self-portraits taken with camera phones which is why we’ve been so keen to launch the iPhone app.“

The free iPhone app will support the site and enable users to take and upload photos directly from their camera roll.

As well as tagging brands and shopping links, users are encouraged to tag where they are (e.g New York), what they’re doing (e.g going to the cinema) and how they’re feeling (e.g hungover). Users can then browse by these tags, so if you want to see all the outfits from people going clubbing in London – you can! The current top trending moods on the site are ‘happy’, ‘chilled’, ‘arse kickingly awesome’, ‘excited’ and ‘tired’.

As everybody loves a game these days, there is also a competitive element to the site. Users gain ‘kudos’ for various actions on WIWT – from completing their profile information to receiving a gold star to being featured on the homepage. Users will soon be able to see how they rank against their friends and against other users in their city. Brands will also be able to see the top ranked users who are wearing their garments.

The business model? Whilst the site and app are completely free to use, WIWT will make money though affiliate links, highly targeted display advertising, brand partnerships and site takeovers.

Poppy concludes: “The feedback from both our beta testers and the big British high street brands that we’ve been working closely with has been overwhelmingly positive. It seems that there is a gap in the market for a site like this - real people uploading real outfits. Everyone loves to people watch in the street but you don’t always have the confidence to ask strangers “where did you get that?” - I really think that WIWT can change the way we shop online and look for style inspiration.”