Het stylingprincipe

Virtual style and fashion coach

2style4you is a tool for personal clothingadvice. It's a method for specifying garments and matching individual garments to individual consumers based on a recommendation engine combining measurements, body shapes and preferences.

help women find clothes that flatter her body

This Dutch SME has developed a system to help women find the type and style of clothes that suits both their bodies and the current fashion. It is based on a database containing detailed size parameters of the female body and also very precise attributes of a large array of clothing articles. A proprietary algorithm matches the attributes of individual clothing items to individual consumers.
The present invention relates to computer systems for providing consumer access to databases of clothing items. It an improved online clothes shopping system, where a consumer is presented with a personalized online store that lists clothing items for sale that are most likely to flatter that particular consumer. The system can be used in shops and on-line diminishing the number of returned articles.

comparing garments and consumers body shapes

In a matching process, garments and consumers body shapes are compared. For garments, the garment style/proportion and garment attributes (colour, weave, fabric content, price, etc.) are taken into account, while for the consumer, consumer body shape and colour type are taken into account.

Fashion rules can be defined for various garment style(s) that suit a particular body proportion. Fashion rules (programmatically defining fashion expertise) can be "overlaid" on the matches to recommend the best combinations that will flatter. In this manner, a consumer might be presented with a large number of garments to choose from, but each would be more likely to be a "good choice" while leave out those garments that are less likely to flatter. There could be a wide variety of garments and styles, etc., but organized as a personal store for that consumer.

reducing return of merchandise

One of the biggest problems facing the retail clothing industry is the return of merchandise. Most of the return rate for women's clothing sold is due to the problem that the item doesn't look good on the particular body of the consumer.

Online shopping is more remote and less physical than in-person shopping, as computers and computer displays are limited in what they can provide to the potential consumer. For example, the consumer will not be able to feel, smell, hold or manipulate the actual product being ordered. These shortcomings are not an issue where the consumer knows the product and it is unchanging. For example, when the consumer is ordering a specific book by title known to the consumer or a familiar bag of pet food, all the consumer really needs is minimal information, and possibly a photo of the item, to ensure that they are ordering the specific item they had in mind. However, with some other classes of goods, online ordering has been somewhat limiting.

For example, when ordering items of clothing, online shopping has significant limitations. For one, because consumers rarely buy the exact same article of clothing over and over, they often do not have specific clothing items in mind while shopping, such as a particular brand, size, colour, etc. of pants. More typically, a consumer is purchasing some item of clothing he or she does not already have an exact copy of, so there may be a question of how that item might look when worn by that consumer. The best approach is for the consumer to physically have the item and try it on, which is impossible with online shopping.

see merchandise quickly and efficiently

Another drawback for in-store shopping is the large amount of inventory which must be made available. Today, customers lead very busy lives and often do not have the time to sift through all of the merchandise. Thus, a need exists for a method of allowing customers to see merchandise quickly and efficiently.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method of electronic fashion shopping and manual shopping as a marketing and sales tool for retailers and manufacturers to provide enhanced services and easy shopping for customers while increasing efficiency. It gives them the opportunity to make multiple sales, build customer loyalty and provide outstanding personal service.

teaching about body shapes and -facets

Another object of the present invention is to provide a dynamic personalized system that helps women, men, and children save time, money, and countless hours of frustration by teaching them about their body type and the clothing styles that flatter that body type as well as showing them how to create their own unique fashion statement based on their personality and lifestyle. A further object is to provide a method of electronic shopping and manual shopping which reduces the amount of time expended shopping.

secret 2style4you formula

The consumer is asked to to give 4 body measurements, her height, weight and length, and to identify what she experiences as her less desirable body facets. After the personal information is entered, the system determines a body type based on the measurements and body facets. The secret 2style4you formula calculates her unique body type out of a total of 10 million possible body types. As determined by the system, body type is an individual's skeleton or bone frame plus an amount of flesh surrounding a specific anatomical part.

body shape defining process

The body shape defining process is a series of calculations establishing arithmetic and/or geometric relationships between the different body measurements and facets to generate an outline of a body. The shape defining process evaluates the relative proportions of certain points on the torso including, but not limited to: the proportion of the shoulders to the hips, the shoulders to the bust, the bust to the waist, the waist to the hip, etc. For example, one of the calculations of the shape defining process might determine the value of the shoulder circumference minus the hip circumference. Human body measurement data taken from representative samples of the human form the inputs of the shape defining process. The sample body measurement data is statistically analyzed to discern clustered subsets within the population, each sharing common data values. Each body shape is defined by a core set of measurement values together with an acceptable range of deviation from the mean for each value.

garment MATCHINGprocess

Fashion rules can be defined for various garment style(s) that suit a particular body proportion. The input employed to define garment types and fashion rules is human fashion expertise. There are clothing designers and fashion experts skilled in the art and business of apparel making whose experience was called upon to define various garment types.

Whether a garment flatters its wearer is a matter of opinion. Judgments of fashion, style and taste are highly variable by place, time and culture. Nevertheless, there are arbiters of taste and fashion experts who formulate general rules and guidelines helpful in determining whether a garment flatters a wearer. For example, one rule might state that garments with thick horizontal stripes are unsuitable on short round bodies. Fashion expertise forms the input for defining a plurality of such fashion rules as used by the consumer-garment matching method defined herein.

garment definition & fashion rules database

Garment type definitions together with their fashion rules and tolerances are stored in a definitions & rules database. The data to populate the data structure containing garment data is manual work. This data might be provided all or in part by the garment vendors.
In some variations, the garment record is generated, in whole or part, from descriptions of the garment. This would allow, for example, automated processing of text and other descriptions of garments, perhaps from a vendor's web resources describing that vendor's garments and outfits. An example might be a collection of web pages or a database used for driving a web shopping system.

The clothes shopping system is a computerized implementation of a consumer-garment matching method. A personalized shopping process presents a filtered and ranked list of matching garments for recommendation to the consumer in an individually customized online shopping environment. Through this, the consumer's personalized store, the consumer may purchase recommended garments that have a high probability of flattering. If any of the above comparisons do not match, then the garment is discarded and a match assessment is started on the next garment, if any.

field testing

The invention is field-tested and was nominated for the Shell LiveWIRE Award. An example of this invention is visible at this website. It’s a personal mall, wherein filtering is done as above, but over multiple online retail outlets who pay commissions (affiliatemarketing). An advantage to those retailers who join the personal mall and provide a virtual storefront is reduced return rates.

2style4you.com: her personal online clothing store

Consider a consumer, Nicole. Using her home PC, Nicole accesses the consumer module of 2style4you.com and avails herself of the opportunity to shop and learn her body shape. Following on-screen instructions she uses a tape measure to collect her body measurements and enters them into an online form. She also enters her other profile information. This data is sent to backend for consumer recording. Nicole's returned figure analysis is displayed to her. She can also receive an email containing her figure analyis in a printable, machine-readable format. The resultant figure analysis may be physically sent to Nicole in a variety of forms, such as a printed receipt, or embedded along with all, or part, of her consumer record on a magnetic card, or a SmartCard(TM), etc. It may also be forwarded to her cellular phone, e.g., as a data file or an executable program. A consumer's body measurements may also be collected automatically; for example, by a full-body scanner at a retail establishment.

The personalized shopping process presents a consumer with her personal online clothing store, where she may browse and purchase recommended garments that she can trust will flatter her body and suit her clothing preferences. Only those garments that flatter the consumer are displayed in her Personal Store. These items may be displayed in a plurality of modes; e.g., ranked by personal fashion preference, or price, or colour, or seasonal trends, and so forth. And they may be displayed in any combination that the match assessment result allows.

The consumer may wish to consider garments that are less-than-perfect matches for her. If so, those garments can be displayed. In some embodiments, the garment's attributes may be displayed as a text or as an icon by the interface in order to indicate to the consumer why that garment is not suitable for her.

The consumer may "page" through the garments by selecting the page controls. A garment may be displayed with picture(s), descriptive text, ordering information, shopping cart buttons, etc. The results of a match assessment may also be emailed to the consumer, delivered via cellular phone, PDA, physically mailed in the form of a personalized printed catalogue, or other delivery methods.

RETAIL online: licensing

The invention provides a method of electronic fashion shopping and manual shopping as a marketing and sales tool for retailers and manufacturers to provide enhanced services and easy shopping for customers while increasing efficiency. It gives them the opportunity to make multiple sales, build customer loyalty and provide outstanding personal service. The system is integrated easily. For more information, contact 2style4you.

Retail STORE: how to use this invention offline?

The invention can also be used as an in-store computer system that allows retailers and manufacturers to provide customers with a personalized shopping experience while freeing sales people.
The consumer uses a kiosk in a retail store where the selection represents what is available in inventory at that moment on the floor and the consumer may print out and shop using a recommendation/personal selection. For more information, contact 2style4you.

2style4you is looking for Partnerships!

The technology described here lends itself perfectly to integration in a chain. 2style4you however prefers to concentrate on our own expertise. We would be very interested however to participate in an existing chain or to help and form a new one.

Type of partners sought: SMEs experienced in fashion technology

Specific area of activity of the partner: augmented reality, fitting form technology, Avatar-development, body scanning, interactive virtual fitting mirror technology, RFID, mass-customization configuration-development (visualisation of variations in garments (model, details, colours))

Task to be performed by the partner sought: develop or adapt technologies for matching body dimensions and clothes online or in stand-alone systems.

Targeted countries: all

Collaboration type:

• Joint further development
• Testing of new applications
• Adaptation to specific needs

Contact details

The company is registered: 20143004, BTW nr: NL 819721414B01

• 2style4you:

Drs. Barbara Snoeker, + 31 6 511 57 504, barbara@2style4you.com

• Enterprise Europe Network:

Rolf R. van de Pavert, +31 70 373 55 54, r.van.de.pavert@senternovem.nl