Part 2: How to find your own style when surrounded by excessive consumption?

While Instagram missed a trick, Lemon8 looks set to take the shoppable lead

Now that we have our bearings in an industry rife with much needed change (Part 1) it’s time to get down to the gritty business of defining your personal style.

I remember being sat at the now defunct start-up Thread in ‘silicon roundabout’ in London 2014 after returning from Berlin. After an interesting conversation about personal style and how Thread envisioned the growth of AI and personal styling, they asked me if I styled based on ‘colours.’

I replied something along the lines of ‘No, I have never once shopped by my ‘colours’ and I don’t believe it’s how people solve personal style.’

Five men, including some of the brightest ex Google brains at that time and me - a women no less - telling them that I didn’t agree.

This did not go down well.

Their approach to personal style was to focus on the abstracts of appearance; colouring, hair colour, body shape and then to compliment that information against brands consumers like and don’t like, colours they like and don’t like etc By using a mix of AI and human stylists, they hoped to crack and code personal styling for the average consumer.

In theory it made sense and I could see how a group of engineers - with logical minds - who had never encountered the fashion industry, could land on that hypothesis. Yet fundamentally, it goes against what personal style truly is.

My gut told me that the business model would fail.

In 2022, Thread went into administration.

Personal style is not logical, it’s emotional.