The Best Personal Stylist Apps
Time is our most valuable currency, and a common victim of our increasingly hectic lifestyle is undisputedly our style. We all get dressed every morning, but few of us live in outfits that make us as comfortable and confident as we can possibly be.
Style is elusive, but transformative. It changes how others perceive and interact with you, and plays an outsized role in our mental well-being. If you’re like me, you have probably wished for professional help from a personal stylist to take your style to the next level.
But to be completely real, personal styling can be incredibly expensive and and oftentimes shockingly inefficient, particularly when it comes to in-person styling. An average personal stylist charges between $1,000 - $4,000 just to show up at your door, and that’s before adding the astronomical shopping budget that many demand that you commit to spend.
Another major issue is that traditional personal stylists lack the time and tools to understand what you already own. And so they instead focus on guiding you to purchase new items, because it’s easier than working with your existing closet and they often receive commission incentives from the stores they bring you to. I have always struggled with this inherent conflict of interest.
In a world where many of us are already addicted to shopping much too often, personal styling should *not* always equate to shopping. I also don’t believe personal styling should remain inaccessible and a privilege for only the wealthy. Personal styling needs a makeover - and this is where personal styling apps come in.
Technology has transformed many industries, from hailing a cab to renting out your guest room. Platforms like Uber and Airbnb provide unparalleled ease for users to do things that were otherwise more cumbersome; they also disrupted traditionally high-barrier industries to democratize access and created new economies of their own.
Personal styling is undergoing the same technological transformation, and digital styling - commonly performed by personal stylist apps - is gaining popularity. Let’s take a closer look at what personal stylist apps are and how they could elevate your style.
What Is a Personal Stylist App?
A personal stylist app is a platform where you can get personalized styling tips, as well as outfit and shopping recommendations. There are two types of personal stylist apps: AI-powered personal stylist apps and Human-powered personal stylist apps.
AI-Powered Personal Stylist Apps
AI-powered personal stylist apps make recommendations based on an outfitting algorithm, which in simple terms is a set of logic based rules most likely pre-programed based on training data.
If you’ve ever spoken to an Alexa or Google Home, you probably already have an idea about how “intelligent” AI still isn’t. When AI today struggles to understand explicit instructions, how can we expect them to master something as subjective as personal style? Enough said.
Because of the inherent limitations of these AI-powered apps, we will focus this article on Human-powered options.
Human-Powered Personal Stylist Apps
Human-powered personal stylist apps are platforms that connect you with real, human personal stylists digitally via text messages or/and video chats and can be a real game changer in elevating your style.
Why We Love Human-Powered Personal Stylist Apps
Because of the remote nature of engagement, a huge upside for personal stylist apps is that they’re significantly less expensive than inviting a personal stylist to your home. Remote sessions are typically priced at $100 - $250 versus the multiple thousands that in-person stylists can charge to walk through your door.
In addition to making personal styling more affordable, personal styling apps have the potential to drastically improve the overall styling experience for both the client and the stylist.
First, they can provide a platform for you to catalog your wardrobe so your stylists can have visibility into what you already own. This means that they can shift the conversation from selling you new things to teaching you how to wear what’s already in your closet.
Second, personal styling apps offer a seamless way to engage with your personal stylist on a more regular basis. For example, you just purchased a new coat and aren’t sure how to best wear it, so why not get a professional opinion from your stylist? Or even better, you’re *considering* buying a new coat and want to make sure it goes with the rest of your wardrobe before pulling the trigger. Your personal stylist can help you to be absolutely sure.
A good personal stylist app can be a fantastic tool to give you a more conscious, curated, and circular wardrobe. However, few personal stylist apps out in the market today live up to the expectation.
I have done extensive competitive research in this space to build Indyx, so I believe I am well positioned to share some pros and cons about each leading personal stylist app to help you find the right platform.
The Best Human-Powered Personal Stylist Apps
Summary:
Catalog your wardrobe on your own with automatic background removal
Or, hire an Indyx Archivist to catalog your wardrobe for you
Build unlimited outfits and plan packing lists or other collections
Add your outfits to a calendar to automatically track cost-per-wear; track your selfies to remember how you looked and felt in those outfits
Weekly outfit recommendations from the real stylist of your choice for $25+ a month, or get a one-off Lookbook starting at about $100
Free to download, available on both iOS & Android
Indyx is the only one-stop personal styling & digital wardrobe app that helps you digitize your items and workshop your wardrobe with expert stylists all in one place.
Indyx makes it easy for you to upload the items already in your closet for free with their intuitive interface and automatic, AI-powered background removal that makes your digital wardrobe appear very clean and neat. But if digitizing your wardrobe sounds like a chore, The Catalog is a unique service can sends a professional Archivist to your home to do all the work for you (check the app for latest pricing).
Once you’ve digitized your closet, Indyx does what no other personal styling app is able to: style you within the context of everything you already own. Your stylist studies your entire digital wardrobe to get an in-depth grasp of what is currently in your closet, including your favorite items, most worn items, and the items you want to wear more often. Imagine the power of your entire wardrobe seamlessly shared with your personal stylist.
Most unique is Indyx’s subscription service, The Feed, which gets you weekly professionally styled outfits from your own closet along with optional personalized shopping recommendations, all from a human stylist and starting at just $25 a month. You can choose what stylist you subscribe to and even message them directly.
But if you’re more interested in a one-off refresh, The Lookbook will get you 10 new outfits styled entirely from your own closet or with a few suggestions of what to add to your wardrobe mixed in.
Beyond their paid styling services, Indyx offers a number of free tools you can use to help develop your style on your own. The Style Quiz can help you define your personal style, or you can go even deeper with the free 8-week Style Workshop content series.
Indyx is free and available on both the App Store and Google Play.
Summary:
Hire a personal shopper to fill gaps in your closet
View a feed of stylists’ looks for inspiration
Free to download, available on iOS only
Wishi is a styling app affiliated with Karla Welch, a Hollywood celebrity stylist. The service connects you with a stylist to help you shop online while (maybe) integrating pieces you already own. Wishi offers three digital services: Wishi Mini for $60, Wishi Major for $130 and Wishi Lux for $550.
When you download the app, you’ll be taken through a brief style quiz to match you with a few stylists. From there, you select your stylist and one of their three service tiers.
The Wishi Mini and Wishi Major both provide a moodboard and style boards (2 or 5, respectively) complete with shopping links for suggested items. These tiers offer a 1:1 chat room for direct communication with the stylist, along with opportunities for style board revisions.
The Wishi Lux for $550 is a larger styling package that adds two 30-min calls with your stylist, additional style boards and expedited shipping on the items you buy. There is also an option to integrate pieces from your wardrobe. To do so, you can upload items for your stylist to consider through the Wishi app.
Our opinion on Wishi
If you’re already willing to spend more than $500 on a personal styling session, you might as well go all-out and hire an IRL personal stylist in your area.
The most high-end personal stylists in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco might come with a $3,000+ price tag per session. But at the $500 - $1,000 price point you will likely be able to find a personal stylist who is earlier along in their career to help. An IRL personal stylist will naturally spend more than Wishi’s 30-minute call getting to know you and your wardrobe just through the simple fact that you’re meeting them in-person in your closet.
Second, Wishi is focused on shopping new. If that’s what you’re looking for, then Wishi is a good option. There are some options to add items from your wardrobe for your stylist to consider, and I tried myself to add a few things from my wardrobe to the Wishi app. But overall, I found it to be a disappointing experience as it’s really just a simple photo gallery. Other than using it to show your stylist what you have, there is not much else you can do with it either during or after your styling session.
Overall, Wishi lives up to the definition of “personal styling” that is all about shopping new. If you need help navigating online shopping, Wishi can help you narrow down the options. But if you’re looking for anything beyond shopping, Wishi is not well designed to do it.
Fashivly
Summary:
Web-based service that provides a personalized shoppable style guide
No free features; all services are paid
No option to get help styling items in your existing wardrobe
No app, web only
Fashivly’s concept is very similar to Wishi, but with fewer package options and no app.
After booking and filling out a guided questionnaire, Fashivly will assign you a stylist who will put together either a 10-outfit ($129) or 5-outfit ($79) style guide with links of all-new pieces for you to shop.
Our opinion on Fashivly
My thoughts on Fashivly are similar to those on Wishi, in that this service isn’t truly personal styling, it’s personal shopping. If you struggle with online shopping and want help picking out new items, it’s great! Based on their reviews, it seems Fashivly has quite a few happy customers in that regard.
But, at Indyx we just believe that there is *so* much more that goes into really “solving” your personal style than being told what to buy. A huge problem for most people is that we shop in items, but live life in outfits - and Fashivly’s solution seems to us like it might perpetuate that same issue by encouraging you to simply bolt-on new items to your wardrobe without helping you understand how those items fit in with all the things you already own or how to approach wardrobe building holistically. It just misses the bigger picture of styling over shopping.
Glamhive
Summary:
Web-based stylist network to find a personal stylist
No free features; all personal services are paid and prices vary by stylist
No option to get help styling items in your existing wardrobe
No app, web only
Glamhive is more of a professional network for stylists than a customer-facing personal stylist platform for people looking to get styled. However, you can use the Glamhive network to browse one of the most comprehensive lists of personal stylists from around the country, check out their biography and style philosophy, and book a styling session.
Glamhive does a good job of organizing the various personal styling offerings into a digestible service menu: The Professional Edit (a wardrobe cleanout with a shopping list), The (Re)Invention (a wardrobe overhaul), The Seasonal Refresh (adding a few new pieces), and The Special Event (event styling). Individual stylists set their prices for each service and Glamhive acts as the matchmaker.
Glamhive also offers a Style Club subscription for $25 a month, allowing you the opportunity to chat with your stylist for 30 minutes each month.
Our opinion on Glamhive
As much as I love Glamhive’s approach to standardizing personal styling, I am unclear about how these offerings are delivered digitally and whether they offer an improved experience over simply video conferencing with a stylist. I firmly believe in rooting personal styling in what you already own, and the thought of pulling pieces from my wardrobe and showing them to my personal stylist through Zoom is just antiquated and silly.
Anything shy of a digital platform providing seamless visibility into your wardrobe and demonstrating how new can combine with the existing will make me question how effective the styling service offerings really are.
Summary:
Makes personalized shopping recommendations
Does not offer personal styling services beyond AI assisted shopping recommendations
Can not upload items from your wardrobe, and recommendations only consider what you have previously purchased from Stitch Fix
Free to download, available on both iOS and Android
Stitch Fix has had a spectacular rise in the 2010s as a fashion technology company and was once a rare “unicorn” of Silicon Valley. Despite recent turmoil at the company and a whopping 95% drop in its stock price, Stitch Fix is still the top search result for “personal stylist” and by far the largest personalized shopping recommendation engine in the retail industry.
Stitch Fix calls itself personal styling, but it is really just shopping. It can be slightly more “personalized” than the standard online shopping experience, depending on who you ask.
Unlike all the other options on this list, Stitch Fix does not offer truly personal one-on-one services with a human stylist who can customize to your needs. Instead, they gather data from you through a questionnaire for an algorithm to interpret what you might like and make shopping recommendations based on what is available to sell from their inventory. A human ‘stylist’ simply makes final selections.
Stitch Fix started with a monthly subscription box where you would receive a box of 5 items chosen by a ‘stylist’ to purchase or return. As consumers eventually got tired of playing the subscription game, Stitch Fix has pivoted its business model with the addition of Stitch Fix Freestyle to become effectively just another virtual department store.
Our opinion on Stitch Fix
I have always found the Stitch Fix business model misleading and frustrating. A simple search for reviews on Stitch Fix will surface common complaints of repeatedly getting sent the same five pairs of black pants under its legacy subscription model. After all, Stitch Fix never cared if you already had twenty other similar pairs of pants in your wardrobe. As long as they have those black pants in their inventory to sell and its algorithms know that you liked them before, those pants will become your top recommendation.
Stitch Fix, along with every other personal styling app, has not been able to reconcile the inherent conflict of interest of being your “trusted” style advisor and selling you new products that benefit them. This dilemma is exactly why we are building Indyx: to democratize personal styling to help you unlock the potential of what you already own.
Feature Comparison: Human-Powered Personal Stylist Apps
| Indyx | Wishi | Fashivly | Glamhive | Stitch Fix | |
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| Choose your stylist |  |
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| Outfiting from your closet | |
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| Shopping recommendations | |
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| Android App | |
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| iOS App | |
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| Cost to download | Free | Free | N/A | N/A | Free |
