It certainly isn’t impossible to identify and shop brands spotted in celebrity street style — it can just take a bit of digging through social media accounts, search engines and retailers. A new startup wants to streamline the process.
Bobby Maylack, former chief creative officer at Cameo, co-founded OneOff, an AI-powered app that endeavors to make the fashion discovery process more efficient. It officially launched on Wednesday.
“Today, people are more passionate about what their favorite celebrities, influencers and friends are wearing,” he tells Fashionista. “But you have to turn into Sherlock Holmes of figuring out what this product is: You’re going on fan accounts, you’re going on TikTok searching their name, you’re doing reverse image searching. This was a massive existing consumer behavior that was really messy for the buyer.”
Photo: Courtesy of OneOff
OneOff hopes to solve this problem by serving as a one-stop shop for identifying and purchasing celebrity outfits. The platform uses AI to automatically analyze paparazzi photos and social media posts of select A-listers to build feeds spotlighting their style and aesthetic.
Upon downloading the app, users select their style, follow celebrity accounts and get personalized feeds with product recommendations. (Some VIP names that already have verified profiles include Emma Roberts, Emma Chamberlain, Winnie Harlow and Quavo.) Consumers can also build out their own curated edits.
Maylack likens the app to Spotify, but for fashion: “Spotify built this platform that has curated playlists from your friends, from your favorite celebrities, from your favorite music artists, and then uses that listening data to start making recommendations for what you should listen to. We were really passionate about building that for the fashion space.”
Photo: Courtesy of OneOff
Tracking celebrity fashion is just one key feature of the platform, though. At its crux, OneOff’s goal is to become the ultimate brand discovery tool. Its inventory spans more than 1 million SKUs from a wide array of top retailers, including Ssense, Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa, Moda Operandi and Revolve — with one unified checkout.
“First and foremost, I want this to be a discovery platform,” Maylack explains. “So we wanted to make sure that we got this unbelievably rich catalog, so that, day one, you could be seeing tons of products that you actually would want to engage with. […] At the same time, I think it’s so cool that there’s been this huge movement towards high and low [fashion]. That’s a really interesting trend as well that I want to make sure that we play into.”
There’s a big social commerce angle as well: Homepages are specific to the individual; edits can be shared via text or on other platforms like Instagram story; and users can follow their friends’ accounts to stay updated on what they’re shopping.
Photo: Courtesy of OneOff
“We want to make something that’s inherently fun to just scroll around and play with, like clicking on any celebrity that you’re a fan of and being able to just go through their products and add stuff,” Maylack says. “The goal here is, we can make something sticky that people want to use when they’re not necessarily buying. It’s a platform they can use when they’re just browsing around, and then that will make it to our recommended products for you […] and so ultimately, when you do want to go buy something, you want to do it here.”
OneOff isn’t the first AI-powered platform to generate personalized product suggestions based on shoppers’ habits or who they follow, nor will it be the last. But where others prioritize one-on-one commerce, OneOff takes a more holistic approach to brand discovery.
Photo: Courtesy of OneOff
“Our North Star is: How do we build the best personalization platform in the fashion space? What I get really excited about is that I believe people tie so much of their personality to their style, to their fashion,” he says. “I want to create this really cool, rich place where people can share that with others. That’s our central goal and that won’t change.”
Source: Fashionista.com
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