'Smart' Fitting Room Suggests What to Wear

Jan. 23, 2008 -- When it comes to buying clothes, what looks good is a combination of personal preference and fashion trends. But shoppers can feel overwhelmed by the choices and often seek advice from friends.

Now a dressing room equipped with cameras and interactive displays could lead to intelligent fitting rooms that connect shoppers to a social fashion network, where they can see themselves and others wearing different outfits.

The system can help shoppers compare their dressing room choices before purchase and can suggest alternative styles. The program can also recommend other clothes available on the store's racks.

"The system improves [a shopper's] confidence in the decision-making process and improves their shopping experience," said Wei Zhang, a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Zhang developed the system with Takashi Matsumoto of Keio University and Juan Liu, Maurice Chu and Bo Begole of PARC in Palo Alto, Calif.

Interactive dressing rooms and social fashion networking are already a part of our society. A Prada store in New York City has a "Magic Mirror" that takes a video image of the shopper, which can then be sent via email or SMS to friends, who can reply with a thumbs up or down.

And the Web site Shareyourlook lets fashionistas upload images of themselves wearing different outfits, which others can then comment on.

But neither system provides a real-time interactive experience.

Zhang's Responsive Mirror uses cameras, displays, machine learning and computer vision software to produce an interactive display and intelligent clothes retrieval.

In the Intelligent Fitting Room, the shopper sees a mirror flanked by displays. Directly in front, she sees herself in the actual mirror. To the left of the mirror, she sees herself on a display wearing the outfit she tried on previously. This allows her to compare multiple outfits at the same time.

To the right of the mirror, the shopper sees another display showing images of other people wearing similar clothes or completely different styles. This is meant to give the shopper information about the social context of her choice and to provide her with alternative fashions she might like to try.