The influencers have started to promise me that they know how to get me to stop shopping: I just have to enter every garment of clothing I own into an app, one by one. \u201cI digitally cataloged my ENTIRE wardrobe,\u201d they<\/a> swear<\/a> on<\/a> videos<\/a>, routinely<\/a> pulling<\/a> in hundreds of thousands of views.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The selling point of these apps (Indyx, Whering, ACloset, OpenWardrobe, and many more) is seductive; they promise to help users understand exactly what they already own so that they shop less. In theory, that means saving money \u2014 and slowing the steady damage the fashion industry is wrecking on our planet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCollectively, we are buying and then throwing away more than ever before,\u201d Indyx warned on its website<\/a>, before reciting dire statistics about how many clothes are produced now and how many of them end up in landfills. Luckily, it said, \u201cWe\u2019re here to break the cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That idea appealed to me. I am not a fashionista, but I enjoy clothes enough to buy more than I really need, despite what I know about fashion\u2019s impact on the planet<\/a>. My intellectual understanding of climate change can\u2019t always stop me from clicking \u201cadd to cart\u201d when I see a dashing pair of wide-legged trousers, even though there\u2019s a hard limit on the number of times a person can wear wide-legged trousers in one week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Still, to make these apps work, you have to individually enter photos of everything you own now and everything you buy in the future, which sounds like a tedious, laborious process. (You can take the photos yourself or hunt down product pictures from the brand.) And because so many influencers are pushing this, it\u2019s hard to tell how life-changing it really is and how much is just marketing speak and hype. So, I decided to test one of these apps \u2014 Indyx \u2014 for you. I also talked to wardrobe cataloging enthusiasts and experts on sustainable consumption to see what I could learn from them. I wanted to know: Could cataloging our wardrobes actually make us shop less? And, if it can, would it be worth the effort?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Wardrobe cataloging apps did not always advertise themselves as being good for the planet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 2023, the journalist Avery Trufelman investigated the nascent wardrobe cataloging app industry<\/a> for her podcast series Articles of Interest<\/em>. She found that a lot of the apps flopped. The issue was the business model, which was based on revenue generated from affiliate links. The idea was that people would click to purchase items they saw within the apps, and the company would take a cut of each sale. But when the apps were well designed, Trufelman reported, users felt less<\/em> of a need to buy more clothes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The current generation of wardrobe cataloging app developers has turned this from a bug into a feature. They now market their wares as the solution to overshopping, and they make their money by charging for either the app itself or for its extra content. (Indyx itself is free, but you have to pay a $75 yearly subscription for its enhanced features.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What the marketing gets right is that the fast fashion problem is real. \u201cAnywhere from two to 10 percent of our global greenhouse gas emissions are associated with fashion,\u201d said Brie Berry, assistant professor of environment and sustainability at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fashion\u2019s emissions are generated by the factories that manufacture clothing (the water and the fertilizers for growing cotton, the oil for developing synthetics) and the consumers who wear these garments (the slow shed of microplastics from yoga pants, the water and the energy consumed by washing and drying). When we get rid of old clothes, much of it ends up in landfills or incinerated. By some estimates, the fashion industry contributes more to climate change<\/a> than the aviation industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere\u2019s only one solution to the mess that we find ourselves in: buying less,\u201d said Katia Dayan Vladimirova, a researcher whose consulting firm Post Growth Fashion<\/a> focuses on alternatives to growth in the fashion system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To buy less, it helps most people to know what they already own, said Alyssa Beltempo, a slow-fashion<\/a> content creator and educator. Beltempo makes videos guiding viewers through the process of \u201cshopping their own closets\u201d to help them buy less stuff, but she\u2019s found in her work that a lot of people aren\u2019t clear on the contents of those closets. Because of that confusion, they end up buying stuff they don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s where cataloging can be helpful, Beltempo said. \u201cThese apps reduce that hurdle of not seeing the clothes you have,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Personally, what I was looking for wasn\u2019t enhanced clarity so much as a barrier. I wanted to erect a wall between my desire to own a new piece of clothing and the click of the buy button. A searchable, scannable lookbook of everything I owned, I thought, might well do the trick.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Indyx has been hyping up its new AI feature, which transforms a picture of a garment hanging limply off a hanger into a neat flat lay photo. It sped the process up, but it was also buggy; it garbled text on the front of T-shirts, misread colors, and had a tendency to interpret loose threads as ornamental bows while leaving wrinkles (I am not an ironer) untouched.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I was also concerned that the process inserted AI, with its insatiable need for water and energy<\/a>, into a project sold as a way of reducing my environmental impact. But the sustainability experts I spoke to were both skeptical that this sort of light AI use was such a big deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cTaking photos and then asking an app to think about how to arrange your clothing into outfits is probably one of the lighter uses of AI that I could imagine,\u201d Berry said. Vladimirova agreed that using AI for this task is unlikely to be as bad for the planet as buying even one new garment. \u201cBut then, there is also no proven causality between using this app and reducing overconsumption,\u201d she added as a caveat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s possible to input your clothes into Indyx without using the AI feature, but the truth is: I don\u2019t know that I could have made myself go through with the whole rigamarole without it. I ran out of free AI processing about 80 percent of the way through and, overwhelmed at the thought of having to do my own flat lays, paid $75 to buy more without hesitating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n All told, it took me about five hours and many old episodes of Top Chef<\/em> to photograph my summer clothes, not including shoes, jewelry, or accessories. My time spent cataloging did not include the process of entering additional data about each garment (including its initial cost, its fiber composition, where I bought it), a herculean task that I have been tackling much more slowly than the initial entry process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Doing the shoot properly would have taken longer. Angela Goodman, a 51-year-old marketer from Seattle with a background in product photography, says she ran her own cataloging session like a pro shoot, using art lights and folding and refolding each garment to lie perfectly. It took her 10 hours spread out over multiple weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As an exercise, photographing every piece of clothing I owned was clarifying, although not significantly more clarifying than going through it Marie Kondo-style<\/a>. It left me with a small donation pile of items I no longer wanted and a fretful awareness that I own too many white T-shirts. In theory, that\u2019s the kind of insight a wardrobe cataloging app produces by the spade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Vladimirova, the sustainability consultant, said that, even though she has a better idea than most of how destructive the fashion industry is, she struggles with over-shopping. She thinks a lot about why people buy so many clothes; her best guess is that it\u2019s a way to self-soothe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cA lot of consumption happens in the evening when we feel vulnerable and tired, and we\u2019re trying to reward ourselves with this shot of dopamine,\u201d she said. For some people, these apps can replace the dopamine hit that comes from scrolling through other people\u2019s outfit photos with the dopamine hit of scrolling through your own clothes, neatly folded and filtered until they look like aspirational fashion inspo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Part of the satisfaction here is the infographics. After you\u2019ve given Indyx all your fashion data, the app crunches your numbers and tells users how much you\u2019ve bought new versus secondhand, as well as the share of natural fibers as opposed to synthetics in your closet, so that you can track the environmental impact of your shopping habits. (Synthetics tend to have a higher carbon footprint than natural fibers<\/a>.) It tells you what their cost per wear is on each item to help you track which expensive garment was worth the splurge and which was a waste of money. Users can also plan outfits. You can share your wardrobe with stylists who will plan the outfits for you (on Indyx, the service ranges from $25 a month to \u201cthe low hundreds\u201d<\/a>). It\u2019s like playing paper dolls with your own wardrobe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For Goodman, the former product photographer, all this data takes the place of recreational shopping. She describes getting a marketing email from one of her favorite brands about a sale. After a quick scroll through their offerings, she found that she felt no urge to buy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018I do not need more clothes. I\u2019m going to go update my Indyx, because I\u2019m a couple of weeks behind,\u2019\u201d she said. She started inputting the last few outfits she\u2019d worn into one of the Indyx services that is supposed to allow users to track their patterns and see which clothes they actually wear and what they like in an outfit. \u201cI\u2019m playing with clothes,\u201d she said. \u201cBut, like, I\u2019m not shopping. I\u2019m, you know, building.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Over time, all this data is supposed to inform future shopping choices. \u201cThere is something very clear about seeing two pieces that you\u2019ve owned for the same amount of time \u2014 one that you\u2019ve worn 57 times and one that you\u2019ve worn twice,\u201d said Alexandra, a 29-year-old consultant in Northern Virginia who requested her last name be withheld. She thinks tracking her clothes has given her \u201ca little bit less buyer\u2019s remorse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cataloging your wardrobe can\u2019t prevent a compulsive need to buy, though.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it cured me of my undiagnosed shopping addiction,\u201d Alexandra said. \u201cYou can very quickly go from \u2018I\u2019m cataloging what I have\u2019 to \u2018I\u2019m seeing a bunch of gaps in my wardrobe that I should fill immediately.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The main question I had about these apps was whether, with such a labor-intensive process, there comes a time when the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alexandra says that she gradually stopped using her wardrobe app last year, after she moved out of her own apartment and back into her family\u2019s suburban house in the midst of a career transition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was separated from a lot of my belongings for a very long time, and then, as I started to get things back, it didn\u2019t feel worth the effort anymore,\u201d she said. Who was she going to see in one of her curated outfits? \u201cMy job\u2019s on a computer. When I leave the house, I go to the grocery store and the pharmacy and the bookstore,\u201d she said. \u201cThere just wasn\u2019t incentive anymore, compared to when I was closer to the city and doing things more regularly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beltempo, the slow fashion content creator, said she doesn\u2019t bother to add every new purchase to her own catalog.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI really use it more for my packing,\u201d she said. Before she travels, she makes a list of likely candidates for her suitcase and enters them into the app. \u201cAnd then, I\u2019ll play, and I\u2019ll make outfits,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Vladimirova, the sustainable consumption researcher struggling with overshopping, gave the apps a spin. She tried three of them and found that she was only able to stick with each one for a matter of months. \u201cIn the beginning, when the novelty of the app is there, it\u2019s very satisfying,\u201d she said. \u201cIt records your outfits in vivid colors. It can crop out the ugly background and keep it very neat, create fancy capsules. They look so lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But over time, they all began to bore her. \u201cAnd now, I forget to update when I buy something new \u2014 usually from secondhand sources \u2014 and it kind of lost its meaning for me,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the premise is good!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My own experience seems to be closest to Vladimirova\u2019s. I keep having to remind myself to enter my outfits into Indyx. Every time I put on a piece of clothing, I think with dread, \u201cOh god, if I don\u2019t look up how much I paid for this, I\u2019ll never know my cost per wear and, then, what\u2019s the point?\u201d I keep giving my shoes guilty looks and thinking about how I should really photograph and catalog them \u2014 if I\u2019m doing this right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a project,\u201d said Lauren Ludwig, a 41-year-old who has been using her wardrobe apps for the past three years. \u201cBut it\u2019s a fun one for someone who enjoys clothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Indyx and its brethren are slick, and their infographics are beautiful. For dedicated wardrobe hobbyists, they\u2019re probably a great option. But for most people who just want to cut down on their clothes shopping, it\u2019s hard to say that the $75 annual subscription is worth it. The free version will give you the same paper doll effect if you are willing to do your own flat lays, or you can recreate it by dragging phone camera pictures of your clothes onto a Google Slides deck.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you find, as Vladimirova theorized, that you shop when you don\u2019t feel good, you can try replacing that habit with a \u201cdopamine menu<\/a>\u201d of small acts that bring you joy, like hugging a pet, doing a puzzle, or going for a walk. And if your closet is filled with brand new clothes you never wear, you\u2019re racking up debt buying clothes, or you just have the nagging sense that your shopping has spiraled completely out of control, therapy is not a bad idea<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Personally, I found that Indyx could not give me what I really crave when I want to play with clothes: the understanding of the way fabric drapes against my body, the knowledge of its texture against my skin. There is no substitution for the slow analog process of walking into my closet, touching my clothes with my human hands, and learning with my five senses that what I have is already enough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s only one solution to the mess that we find ourselves in: buying less\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
How to catalog every piece of clothing you own<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cI\u2019m not shopping. I\u2019m building.\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cThere just wasn\u2019t incentive anymore\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n