Hi Closet Couture members,

We are at an exciting time here at CC. So many big plans for great new products, but I want to hear from you. What would you like to see on Closet Couture in the future?

No guarantee we can build it, but by letting us know, we can see if we can get there and how quickly it might be able to happen.

Please, either email me on the site or reply here.....

Thank you and see you around the site!

Chris

I would love a BlackBerry app of the calendar, so I can see what I plan on wearing the next day, etc.

Oops, I had two ideas, but I posted them as new topics in the main "Help Us Improve" section, before I read this one. Sorry! I hope you will take the time to read them and consider applying them to the site.

The other day I tried loading some images and used the background remover. My item was an orange shirt with an image on the front. The background was white, and the background remover distorted the color of the shirt and cut out parts of the shirts decal.

I was thinking that it would be nice if you could upload GIF images with a transparent background and still have the background transparent when it is uploaded. I thought that making the image background transparent myself, then uploading would solve the problem, but it still left a big white block around the item. Sorry if that sounds confusing.

Hi Lcs,

I understand what you are trying to do. The way our background remover works is based on color-contrast - so with your orange shirt, the BR looked at the color in the corner of the photo, saw "white" and removed all the white in the photo, including the decal. I would do this - upload the photo regularly, without using the BR, and then go into the actual item page and from there, click "IMAGE TOOLS". On that page, you can use the BR on a more precise level, turning up or down the intensity and watching it work.

Re: taking off the background yourself, I am not sure why that didn't work and left a white square, except you should be masking out the background, rather than turning it white. I will ask one of our smart engineers what you can consider trying, but the forte of the BR is with solid colors, and it doesn't understand patterns.

Hope this helps!! And thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.

Chris

First of all, I really love this site! I actually use it to get ideas for my outfits before I tornado through my real closet. I only have a couple of small suggestions because I really think everything works great the way it is now.

I like how we can add custom wardrobe categories, but I really wish that I could delete categories that I don't use. If that is not really feasible, it would be great if it just hides the categories that have no wardrobe items in them from the dropdown list when you are in the dressing room.

It would also be helpful to be able to save something as a draft, so you could come back and edit the outfit later without it being published in your albums.

I liked the little background mannequin in the dressing room at first, but then I find myself not using it since I want the clothes to take up as much room as possible so I can see the detail. Is it possible to make the mannequin either bigger or resizable?

Anyway, keep up the great work!

What great suggestions, thank you. I think the idea of saving as a draft is great - that is something we can work on in the future. Also - with the mannequin, there is the ability to hide it below, if you see the little button bottom left that says Hide. But I understand you want to different sizes for it - we will think about the best way to make that happen for you. And we hear you on the categories - we are working on this one currently.

We have so many great things ahead, and your input helps us prioritize, so thank you for passing it along!! Keep letting us know what you need and we will work to achieve it. Have fun and thanks so much!

Chris

I noticed that the homepage has changed, it looks great, except I noticed that the outfits box is smaller. It seems that you can't see them as well as you could before.

It would be nice to be able to search members by location so we can see if local acquaintances are on here.

Am I the only one who thinks it should be easier to upload a profile picture? I admit that I am not super technical but all the other sites (Facebook, Flickr) make it so easy. Everytime I try to put up a profile picture on CC it tells me the file is too big but these are just average photos from Picasa that I've used with no problem on many other sites...

Is it possible to create looks for people I'm following and save it in their looks or vice versa? I would love it if people that are following me can create looks out of my clothes and send the look to me. It might give me some ideas for how to wear things I already own and maybe they could suggest one item I may be missing that would complete the look. I've been looking for that feature but haven't figured out how to do that if that feature already exists. Please let me know how to access that if you already have that feature, or make it easier to figure out, or add it if that's not possible.

Thanks!

I've suggested a few of these ideas to Chris but I just found this post so I thought I'd add the ones I've thought of along with the ideas I mentioned in the past.

First off, this site is amazing and has even more potential. I don't envy your IT department though as I'm sure it's a lot of work to get these ideas/suggestions to come to fruition.

Previously suggested:
1) Single items in multiple categories - Right now you have to upload the same item twice to have it say in the 'Skirts' category as well as a 'hard to match' category. Unfortunately since I'm new to this whole fashion bit I need all the help I can get so I'd have to upload my whole closet twice haha

2) Rating your items - I'd love to be able to tell my friends which items I love and which ones I don't like to use as much for fit or what not. Always a little sad when someone's trying to help and they make an outfit out of things you really don't like

3) see how each item has been used in an outfit - Right now if I want to wear shirt X I have to scroll through all my outfits (assuming it was made for me) to figure out how to wear it or just create a new look. Once I have a lot of outfits though I'm sure it'll get lost in the sea of clothes. It'd be great to have an easy way to see where that item has been used

new stuff:
4) re-editing old outfits - when I get new things I always want to go in and change an old outfit to improve it with my new items but I have to completely recreate the item. Also, sometimes I'm not sure which shoes will best match my outfit so I put both and then link it to my friend to get her opinion. Unfortunately, I can't go back and remove the one that lost :\

5) Categories for outfits - I/others make outfits for play, work, semi- casual and dressy but they're all lumped together. It'd be awesome to assign each created outfit to a category I create so when I'm getting dressed in the morning for work I can easily find my pre-made work outfits!

6) Rearranging / Sorting pieces/outfits/categories - It'd be nice to have options on how to sort your wardrobe ie. newest, highest ranking (other users), highest ranking (my rating), # of outfits used in

7) SubCategories - Right now I make new categories for each type of jewelry ie necklaces/earrings so on. It'd be awesome to have a jewelry category with sub sections for each type and to be able to make these oruselves. I do the same things with tops/dresses (casual/work)

8) on a lesser note - having a crop tool that wasn't a box only - something that let me edit freehand. Probably a bit technical but figured I'd throw it out there.

K, I'm officially out of ideas. The site is great and I think we will always have ideas to help it be more successful. I hope it's taken as compliments and hopes for success rather than complaints.

Just a note: Chris is great and a darling. Thanks to this site, I'm going from tomboy to fashion lover and I feel very confident and proud of the way I present myself. It's the help I always wanted!

I would love to be able to update a wardrobe item's photo without having to delete and redo the item.

Edit: Note to Chris: I LOVE the site! I've been keeping tabs on some functionality that'd be nice, should I message it to you? It's long but they're all little things ><

Hi all who have posted here - thank you for your great comments and suggestions. We are reading everything you write - and while you are totally welcome to email me directly, if you want the issue to be addressed in a timely fashion, here is better (I get a LOT of emails and sometimes don't get to all for a while!)

We are keeping the engineers pretty darn busy here, and many of the suggestions you have offered have been put into play. As well - we are about to announce something pretty amazing over the next few weeks - and then we will have some more time to do some of the tweaks and fixes you'd like.

A lot of the things that are suggested but are not implemented tend to be ideas that may work for some, but not for the many, like hand cropping images - way too hard for most people to deal with, so for stuff like that, I'd suggest editing your photos in another program, then uploading the final version you like to the site.

Others that we think everyone will not only love but use, make the quick cut.

Keep the suggestions coming, and thank you all for the great ideas and for being part of CC!

xx Chris

In that case, here is my list; the programmer in me just looks for these things :)

- using shift to resize at fixed scaling in create mode
- being able to scroll the pop up windows
- option to hide unused clothing categories
- blog linking or an internally supported blogging
- ability to add text to created looks in creation window
- ability to comment on created looks (so you don't have to post a comment on your own stuff or use the title alone to convey what you're trying to do)
- ability to modify created looks
- see where an item has been used in created looks, yours and others
- reordering items within categories (eg. name, color, brand etc.)
- having major categories with sub-categories (eg. Tops -> Tank Tops, T-shirts, Camisoles, Sweaters etc.)
- update an item's photo
- manual background remover image should preview over a user selectable color (so you can tell how transparent the background is actually getting)
- manual background remover on a slider
- individually hideable items
- list items by color, or by several colors (eg. show all gray items, show all gray items and all pink items)
- ability to upload image with transparency already defined
- multiple views for an item (eg. for a jacket: buttoned, unbuttoned; a scarf: wrapped, bunched, shawl-ed)

It would be neat to have a Calendar view of our "looks". It would be a Calendar of the month with thumbnails of the outfit on the day we wore it!

The background transparency does not work at all. If I upload a picture with a white background and choose to make the background transparent it completely washes out the item in the picture.

I like the idea of being able to rate people's clothing items. You could have two ratings, one for the person who owns it to gage how much they love it, and the other for the public to rate it.

I second the calendar section! that would be great addition.

First of all, I LOVE the site. I have a few suggestions - most of which I see on here already but I want to mention them again just so you know I'm thinking about them too!

First, I too would love to be able to reorder items within categories, both as kind of drag and drop how I want and also alphabetically would be awesome.

Second, I wish I could search terms in my closet (unless you can already and I just haven't found it). For example, search for "black" and "shirt" in my closet only.

Last, I know you said you're working on it, but I would love to be able to delete categories I don't use.

Thanks again, the site is awesome and is just what I needed!

Hi All - we are working on a bunch of major stuff now - and some of your suggestions are included in that. thank you for thinking critically about what you'd like the wardrobe system to do and how flexible you'd like it to be. Some of your requests have already been built, but they are not obvious, so we will have to document a little better this summer to reveal all the magical things in CC you can do.

Thank you for bearing with us as we continue to build. Sheldon and Aihui, our spectacular engineers, have been living on Gatorade and Powerbars for about a year, I think, in our quest for closet domination. If you have a moment, drop them a line on the site to say hi! Their screen names are just as written above.

Be back shortly, but we love your suggestions, so don't be afraid to think big and keep em coming! chris

How about an iphone app? I know someone already asked about a blackberry app.....

Thanks!