Outfit suggestion sites for specific pieces of clothing

March 9, 2010 1:46 PM

Are there any sites out there that will suggest outfits around a specific piece of clothing?

I often find myself wondering what outfits I should wear around a specific piece of clothing, unsure of what the fashion do's and don'ts are around that piece of clothing.

For example, I have a pair of cute white ankle boots I'd love to pair with a great outfit. But I'm not the type of girl who can wear ankle boots with skirts or dresses, so I want to know if it's a big fashion no-no to wear white ankle boots with jeans or pants.

Or I have a pretty long gold dress, but have no idea what type of shoe and shoe color to wear with the dress. (Strappy white? Gold heels seem too matchy-matchy, but I have no idea.)

Are there any sites that can provide me with advice or looks that can help me pair my specific pieces of clothing?

I'm looking for something like the advice section of Polyvore, or the searchable look section of Shopstyle. Closet couture is interesting, but I'd like a site where I don't need to upload all my pieces of clothing to a website. The site would be ideally searchable by pieces of clothing, like "white ankle boot" or "gold dress", and return all the various looks that include that item. Somehow I expected Shopstyle's look section to do this, but the search results do not always return the item I'm looking for.

posted by cranberryskies to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (3 answers total)

This is a pretty cool idea, but I'm not sure it would work that well in practice. For instance, all white ankle boots are not created equal - things like material, heel height/shape, type of embellishments, toe shape, etc. will all change the types of outfits that you'd want to wear them with. Same with a gold dress - there's no one style of shoe that goes with all gold dresses, and I'd be suspect of any advice based on such limited criteria.

I've had much better luck by keeping outfits in mind when I shop rather than buying random pieces and trying to pair them up later. Paging through magazines and catalogues or sites like The Sartorialist, Garance Dore, weardrobe, The Uniform Project (and a million others) is great for this kind of inspiration.

Who knows though, maybe someone one here will have the perfect site. If not, you could always make an AskMe with photos of your problem pieces and ask for help finding outfits to pair with them. There are plenty of people on here with great style!
posted by Fifi Firefox at 3:11 PM on March 9, 2010

I agree with Fifi. If you post pictures here you'll get plenty of advice.
posted by tangerine at 9:08 PM on March 9, 2010

Try the forums for YouLookFab. Bonus: the creator of the blog owns a pair of cream boots and wears them with a ton of stuff (I know I've seen more pics, but I can't find them).
posted by timepiece at 5:57 PM on March 10, 2010