“Fashion is attainable.” That was the motto of entrepreneurs Shradha Mehta and Anisha Bhasin Mukherjee when they founded Dress for the Day, a New York-based fashion focused startup with a website dedicated to helping users decide what to wear. The site provides a selection of outfit inspirations for its users while taking into account the various factors in this decision such as occasion, weather, budget, and personal preference. The site offers outfit ideas and sources users to the carefully selected pieces that they model on the site. Dress for the Day (DFTD) is intended to provide the everyday woman with an online approach in coordinating what to wear while still taking into consideration the needs and preferences of each individual woman.
Mehta and Mukherjee came upon the idea for the website when they were discussing a very common problem among themselves and their peers: figuring out what to wear each day. It was then that the two, who had been friends for a decade, thought of Dress for the Day. On May 8th, 2013, they launched their site. Fast forward to present day, Dress for the Day has quickly secured partnerships with over 100 fashion retailers and is consistently receiving more users and subscribers.
Much of Dress for the Day is user-generated. Users simply enter basic information such as occasion, personal style, and weather, and are then given a wide selection of user generated “street-style” looks. Users can find out the brand of certain items or similar items, and are given the option of purchasing them in addition to drawing inspiration from the outfits provided by the site.
In this sense, Dress for the Day offers more than an array of outfit options. With the individualized features that the site provides, Dress for the Day acts as a personal assistant for the user. It sells an experience to the user that retail companies are lacking, and is thus capable of developing a closer relationship with the shopper.
While DFTD is currently in collaboration with various small-scale retailers and boutiques, Mukherjee explains that she and Mehta are working to strengthen additional direct partnerships with big name retailers as well.
Dress for the Day also utilizes a unique, creative, fashion-oriented activity as a way to promote the company: pop-up fashion shoots. Mehta and Mukherjee take to the streets of Manhattan, the Hamptons, and various college campuses, to hold fashion shoots for women in a fun grassroots effort to make Dress for the Day known in various everyday environments. Dress for the Day gets a free marketing pitch, and the “model” gets to be showcased on the site. New York is quickly becoming a hub for fashion tech with accelerators like “NY Fashion Tech Lab” launching earlier this year. The lab much like Dress for the Day connects retailers to the industry. In the future Dress for the Day will also take this connection mobile.
Users can also expect an upcoming Dress for the Day app, which will consist of the same basic principles of the site, but with an additional social media layer in the form of a fashion forum. Users can give and receive fashion recommendations prior to attending events. Dress for the Day also plans on installing a “Your Look” upload feature, letting users submit photos of themselves in outfits that they have created onto the app to share with their fellow users. The app is scheduled to launch this upcoming fall.
Whether it is through the site’s ability to tailor to a specific person’s preferences, or through the founders’ real-life efforts to engage with potential DFTD users, Dress for the Day aims to “cater to the everyday woman.” It is already supported by a strong retail and user base, and shows promise of continuing this upward trend in the future.
