While many of us bought the iPhone to facilitate our addiction to Angry Birds – admit it! – there are some for whom the device serves as a glass and aluminium complement to their expensively tailored looks. These men about town, whose wardrobes are almost uniquely composed of suits and Burberry pullovers, are the market for this latest app, featured in Apple’s New and Noteworthy section.
What is Suit Yourself?
Suit Yourself aims to make your search for the next outfit, be that work suit or wedding dinner jacket, easier, by giving fashion advice or letting you create your own design from scratch. It’s a compact app that nonetheless packs a lot of information, if the styles it recommends are your thing.
Getting into the app
You immediately have the choice of selecting an outfit for wearing uptown, or one for downtown. Pictures of models styling the two looks help you make your decision. That done, there are various options available: you can pick from pre-chosen outfits, create a new one of your own, or just read up on how to create the perfect look. Suit Yourself aims to educate and to give you the chance to create, and it does a good job at both.
The best bits
There is an almost seamless transition between designing your outfit and heading to the online shop to buy it. Every part of the app is designed in the same clean and attractive way, giving a pleasant user experience all the way to the checkout. This is purely in terms of interface, however.
One additional touch we liked was the ‘save outfit’ message – rather than an impersonal and pushy message, a notification asked you politely to consider saving before going back. You can almost hear the sycophantic butler’s voice in your head.
Parts to improve
However good the user interface may be, most users will be shocked by the prices of the items they’re selecting. These are no high street prices; nearly every item costs hundreds of pounds. Due to these extravagant prices, very few will actually take proper advantage of the app by buying the outfit of their choice. Reviewers have suggested that the developers add high street items to the selection available at the minute, which would vastly increase the size of the market, making the app useful to a sensible amount of people.
The verdict
At the moment, this app will only be of use to those who are accustomed to paying over one thousand pounds for one outfit – the privileged few. We’ll have to wait for a future update to discover whether the developers will take comments on board and introduce clothing at sensible prices. We’re not holding our breath, though; the exclusivity of this app is what currently gives it its appeal. If you’re after high street brands, we suggest checking out the apps of stores such as Next, River Island and H&M: though the user experience is not as sleek, your wallet will certainly thank you.