0:00

["Diddle Diddle Diddle

0:02

Diddle"]

0:06

So do you know what Stendhal syndrome is?

0:09

I did not know what Stendhal syndrome is. Stendhal

0:12

syndrome is when you see art

0:14

or see something beautiful, mostly like a painting or something like

0:16

that. Stendhal syndrome has been variously

0:19

known as aesthetic sickness, Florentine

0:21

syndrome, or more colloquially, an art

0:24

attack. It's a psychosomatic

0:26

condition where you get so moved

0:28

by beauty that you develop physical

0:31

symptoms. It's something that fully

0:33

overcomes you, and it just kind

0:35

of changes everything in

0:37

your body, like, because it's euphoria.

0:40

It's kind of like arousal, actually. That's

0:42

how I feel when I see stuff. I feel that. I

0:45

need to feel that as I'm shopping.

0:47

Meacham Winston Meriwether loves

0:50

clothes. It's always been a big deal. And

0:52

he knows that not everyone feels this way.

0:55

So my mother, like, hates shopping. I never went anywhere

0:57

shopping with her. she would get literally migraines when she walks

0:59

into a store. So I would always shop with my father.

1:01

Like, he loves clothes. Like, we're

1:03

obsessed with clothing.

1:05

And so it made sense that his father

1:07

would be the one to take young Meechem

1:09

to a movie that would

1:11

become formative for him and

1:13

for his love of fashion. So

1:16

I would have been like eight. I

1:19

was like, you have to take me to see this movie. I need to see this

1:21

movie. In the first six months it

1:23

dropped, I think I saw like maybe three or four times. And

1:26

then when it came out on VHS, I was like,

1:28

we're watching it again. We're watching it again. But

1:30

I even still watch it often. It's just

1:33

so much of who I am. The

1:35

movie. Yeah, it's crazy. Get out.

1:37

Yeah, sort of, God, yeah.

1:38

That movie is Clueless.

1:41

The shopping with Dr. Seuss? Well, at least

1:43

I wouldn't skin a collie to make my backpack. Clueless

1:47

is a remake of a Jane Austen novel, but

1:49

really it's about the world it's set

1:51

in, which is candy-colored, 90s

1:54

Beverly Hills.

1:56

The

1:58

world of the main character. Cher

2:00

Horowitz. That movie has so many quotable

2:03

lines, especially like the Billie Holiday line. Do you love Billie Holiday?

2:05

Love him. Although, of course, on

2:08

the first dozens of watchings,

2:09

Meacham didn't get most of

2:11

the references. But the

2:13

part of the movie he did get, the part

2:15

that he just got that Meacham

2:17

felt in his body, like Stendhal syndrome,

2:19

was Cher

2:22

Horowitz's closet. I

2:25

knew I wanted that closet. I

2:29

don't think I've talked about anything for like a couple of weeks

2:31

after. I mean, I get up, I

2:34

brush my teeth, and I pick out my full clothes.

2:36

Because this is the cool thing about

2:38

Cher's closet.

2:40

It is mostly a computer program. At

2:44

the very start of the movie, Cher sits

2:46

down before a hulking mass of

2:48

90s khaki-colored computer,

2:50

and on the screen is this cheetah-patterned

2:53

software program that Cher swipes

2:56

through with her finger scrolling

2:59

through a series of her outfits, which get

3:01

displayed on a digital version of

3:03

her body, like she's a paper doll. Digital

3:06

Cher tries on one outfit, the computer says,

3:08

bam, mismatch. The computer serves

3:11

her another outfit, a now iconic

3:13

yellow

3:13

plaid skirt and matching jacket. Cher

3:16

loves it and excitedly gets up

3:18

from the computer and runs to

3:21

her physical closet.

3:22

Essentially, it's just like these racks

3:24

upon racks of clothing. And the outfit

3:27

is served to share on a rotating

3:29

mechanical rack, like the kind you see

3:31

at the dry cleaners. Basically, it just gets delivered

3:33

to her and she's like ready to go. So that

3:36

closet was fully a dream. But in 1995, it was

3:38

just a dream. How

3:41

many people owned a personal computer? There

3:44

was no such thing as touchscreen technology

3:47

or intelligent software that could help you pick outfits,

3:50

nor were there digital avatars or even

3:52

online shopping. Ah, if

3:54

only this dream could somehow be realized.

3:57

Essentially I was like, why doesn't?

4:00

the tech that Sher Horowitz had

4:02

in the 90s from Clueless exist

4:04

yet. So Meacham has a very hardy

4:06

Twitter following. I am medium-sized Meach

4:08

on Twitter, but you probably have me blocked, let

4:11

me know. And he tweeted out, basically,

4:13

yeah, why don't we have the Clueless closet? And

4:16

I think it kind of like created a whole,

4:18

like, not even butterfly effect, but just like a domino

4:20

effect of everyone being like, oh my god, why doesn't it

4:22

exist? Why doesn't it exist? But then there's

4:25

like all these other companies saying like, it

4:27

does exist, actually, it does exist.

4:29

It turns

4:30

out the fascinating thing about Cher's

4:32

closet is not that it hasn't

4:34

been attempted. In fact, it

4:36

is continuously attempted

4:39

by various companies and individuals,

4:42

many of whom were very mad at Meacham's

4:44

complaint. So how many companies

4:46

reached out and were like, this exists?

4:48

Oh my god, probably like

4:49

five or six. It's

4:51

just that the problem

4:54

with the clueless closet is not

4:56

the technology. As

4:58

they say, we have the technology.

5:02

The dilemmas with the clueless closet

5:05

are way more fundamental. And

5:07

they amount to almost philosophical

5:10

problems about how

5:12

we treat our collections of garments

5:14

and what we want

5:16

our wardrobes to be.

5:19

But first, a tiny break.

5:22

I'm Elvis Mitchell. I'm

5:25

Elvis Mitchell. I'd like to invite you

5:27

to join me for the treatment on KCRW.

5:30

My guests include some of the most

5:32

interesting, influential, and inspiring

5:35

creators in the world of entertainment, fashion,

5:38

sports, and the arts. Hear from

5:40

the tastemakers who are weaving the very fabric

5:42

that forms popular culture on the

5:44

catalysts of their creativity, the treatment

5:47

from KCRW wherever you get your podcasts

5:50

or at KCRW.com.

5:52

Maxwell Neely Cohen and Jesse

5:54

Char grew up watching Clueless.

5:57

Before we'd ever met, we both had

5:59

this dream. They each dreamed

6:01

of the closet. We've just always wanted it.

6:03

And then Maxwell and Jesse, in ultimate

6:06

couples goals, just made it. When

6:08

people

6:08

here we've done this, they assume we have the

6:11

physical component. Like a dry cleaning

6:13

carousel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. To be clear,

6:15

Maxwell and Jesse live in New York City and barely have a closet

6:18

at all.

6:18

They made the software from the

6:20

Clueless closet. They made

6:23

digital wardrobes, just

6:25

by themselves, for themselves, just

6:28

for fun. And they each did their

6:30

own versions. So Maxwell's is more minimal

6:32

and sort of a separate aesthetic from the movie, while

6:35

Jesse's is a direct tribute.

6:37

So it has leopard print in the background

6:40

just like shares in the movie. And Chicago

6:42

font just like shares in the movie.

6:44

This like computer looking font is called Chicago.

6:47

Yeah, the accuracy was very important to me.

6:48

Wow. So you'd

6:51

think like, they did it. They made the app,

6:53

not so hard, what's all the fuss?

6:56

But as you'll hear, the Clueless Closet

6:59

doesn't come so easily. Although

7:01

Max and Jesse set out to truly make

7:03

the interface from the movie, little

7:06

by little, it had to become

7:08

something different. The first

7:10

example of this was that Maxwell and Jesse wanted

7:13

their computer program to assemble outfits

7:15

for them. They wanted to be like, computer, make

7:18

me an outfit for brunch, or

7:20

for going out, or for a job interview,

7:22

or for a rainy day.

7:24

They wanted a computer that could fully dress them.

7:27

The original plan, I thought we were

7:29

going to have, I don't know, like stylistic tags.

7:32

So Maxwell and Jesse started to tag all

7:34

of their clothes with different themes. Vibes.

7:37

Functions. Warm. Fall.

7:41

But Maxwell and Jesse couldn't

7:43

make it work. And it wasn't

7:45

like an AI problem. There

7:48

was another roadblock in their tagging

7:50

system. first day where I actually

7:52

built the code, I

7:54

very quickly realized that none

7:57

of that would be necessary because if you're

7:59

a normal person, there won't be enough

8:02

items to actually make any

8:04

sort of fancy like math equation work.

8:07

It'll just repeat itself.

8:08

If that makes sense. When you tried to tag it, you're

8:11

like, oh, it's this shit again. It's like the same

8:13

jacket. To truly make the level of flexibility

8:15

of the clueless computer to have all

8:18

the materials for a fully customizable

8:20

outfit machine,

8:22

you quite simply need a boatload

8:25

of clothes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's

8:27

it. Whereas like, Yeah, if you have 30,000 things, now we're talking. And

8:30

so if you have a remotely normal-sized

8:33

closet, you probably don't have enough options

8:36

to get a fully customizable outfit

8:38

maker.

8:39

Getting that many clothing options is ridiculously

8:42

hard, even for

8:44

someone who does it professionally. Because

8:47

on the set of the movie Clueless, the

8:49

job of actually filling Cher's closet

8:52

with clothes is not a job

8:54

for the costume department.

8:56

That is

8:57

the role of the set decorator.

9:00

So a set decorator is

9:03

the person responsible for decorating

9:05

the set. Let's say you go to an empty

9:07

room and they say, we want this to be a shoe

9:10

store. You make it into a shoe store. Clueless

9:12

had a relatively modest budget, and so they

9:14

shot most of the movie on location

9:17

in one giant Beverly Hills mansion.

9:20

And although Cher's closet looks like it's

9:22

in her bedroom, They actually shot

9:24

it out in the pool house. And

9:27

it was up to

9:27

Amy Wells, the set decorator, to

9:30

turn the pool house into a closet.

9:33

And the thing is, when you're a set decorator, oftentimes

9:35

you work with the costume designer

9:38

to make sure that if you're in the character's

9:40

closet, you can

9:43

get the appropriate clothes from

9:45

that character to use in the closet.

9:47

But the amount of clothing it would take to fill

9:50

that entire pool house would be way

9:52

more than what the costume department had. Yeah,

9:55

that was a really fun set, but

9:57

just

9:57

super complicated as far as just.

12:00

And I was like, uh, okay,

12:02

I guess these random outfits, the

12:04

sort of work, until

12:07

Maxwell gave me the reveal. We

12:09

let the robot pick our outfits today. Today!

12:12

Yeah, I never would have worn this, but

12:14

it seems fine. Wait, can you describe what

12:16

you're wearing? Yeah, I'm wearing some like multi-color

12:19

Nike Air Force Ones, some

12:23

like faux leather shiny leggings

12:26

with this like cyborg pattern, And

12:28

then like a very cottage core pink wool

12:30

oversized sweater, but it works. I

12:33

never would have now that you point them out. I'm

12:35

like, that is kind of a wild combination.

12:38

Maxwell's outfit too. Once he pointed out all

12:40

the individual parts of it, I was

12:41

like, this is bananas. It shouldn't work at

12:43

all. This is all totally random. And yet

12:46

it worked. Maxwell and

12:48

Jesse were mashing genres and purposes

12:50

in a way that almost seemed

12:53

unholy.

12:54

For some reason it didn't bother me so much to think

12:57

that a computer might be able to learn the rules of

12:59

fashion and make outfits. That seemed

13:01

cool. That was the whole point of the Clueless

13:03

closet. But the idea

13:05

that

13:06

there are no rules of fashion,

13:08

that chaos is

13:10

as good a stylist as any, that

13:13

sort of threw me.

13:14

We already have these kind of like algorithms

13:17

in our mind for like how we choose our outfits

13:19

and the things that we think go together.

13:22

When you just do pure random, it just

13:24

shows you anything. And

13:26

it's the things that we don't think about that

13:28

we need help with, like not the things that we

13:31

would already put together. You need help

13:33

getting unexpected, basically. Exactly, exactly.

13:36

Although I do get results

13:39

that have weirdly connecting themes

13:41

that I never would have even thought about, which is strange

13:44

considering that like I've

13:44

bought all of it, I've chosen all of these

13:47

things, but like you still like, We

13:49

learn about ourselves through ClothingRobot.

13:51

ClothingRobot is a very fancy

13:54

name

13:55

for what amounts to a simple JavaScript

13:57

randomizer. But... It's

14:00

funny to think that Maxwell and Jesse's little

14:02

clothing shuffler is still

14:05

far more advanced than

14:07

perhaps the entire production of

14:09

Clueless. This was, you

14:11

know, 1994 when we were in production.

14:14

At the time, none of us were that computer

14:16

literate. I don't even think I used a computer

14:18

in production

14:19

on that show. Steven Jordan, after

14:22

all, is a production designer, not

14:24

a computer guy. There was no such thing

14:26

as a touch screen. And when you first see

14:28

it on the page, it's like, oh my God, how

14:31

are we going to do this? But it was important

14:33

to really go for it, to try to make this big

14:36

splashy technology in the very

14:39

first scene of the movie.

14:40

But it's got to be something that no one could

14:42

even imagine that someone would possess

14:46

such a programming.

14:47

Because for Steven coming out to

14:49

Beverly Hills to make this movie, he saw a lot

14:51

of things he never imagined anyone

14:53

would possess. You know, at one point I

14:55

rang the door of a huge mansion. I

14:57

went down an elevator two stories to weigh

14:59

a discotheque under the house.

15:01

So the closet in the very first

15:04

scene of the movie had to set that

15:06

tone. It had to sell that world.

15:09

It had to be over the top right from the start.

15:11

And they made the computer screen by basically

15:14

making it like a digital puppet. So

15:16

in other words, she would swipe

15:17

the frame, but someone off camera

15:20

was actually manipulating the frame.

15:22

Off screen, someone was basically queuing

15:24

it like a PowerPoint presentation. You

15:26

know, they would match her actions,

15:29

and then they were working a keyboard.

15:32

Clueless is widely considered to

15:34

have one of the first touchscreens

15:37

on film. And yes, by

15:39

the time Clueless came out in 1995, there

15:41

were already fictional touchscreens

15:43

in films like Alien and Tron

15:46

and Total Recall, but those

15:49

were all far-future sci-fi

15:51

interfaces, not contemporary

15:53

ones.

15:55

The thing that made Clueless different

15:57

was it was one of the first times a touchscreen

16:00

was represented as a real

16:02

possibility.

16:03

It was really not about making it futuristic.

16:07

It was just, you know, Cher was not, she

16:10

was a very somewhat simple

16:13

character. And so it's kind of funny

16:15

that behind the scenes, the movie

16:17

was so simple. And then

16:20

it's fitting that the technology of Maxwell and

16:22

Jesse's app is also really

16:24

quite simple. Because

16:26

the hardest part of making the

16:29

Clueless Closet

16:30

is really not

16:31

the tech. The toughest

16:34

part is actually getting

16:36

images of every single garment

16:39

you own. It just seems so labor intensive to even

16:41

just like drag everything and make sure

16:43

it's the right size. Yeah,

16:45

and I mean, it's not difficult work, but

16:48

it's tedious work. Yeah. But I kind

16:50

of like tedium. And yeah, you could take

16:52

pictures yourself, but Jesse signed on for

16:55

extra tedium because she wanted to get professional

16:57

photos of her garments so that the app would

16:59

really look polished like it does in the movie.

17:01

This wasn't a just like, oh, Google image search. It

17:04

was not easy tracking everything

17:06

down. But then when it's all there, when

17:10

you can suddenly scroll through everything

17:13

you wear and not have to hide it away in your

17:15

closet

17:15

or smush it in drawers, you

17:18

suddenly see this portrait

17:20

of yourself. You can start really

17:23

understanding who you say you

17:25

are, I suppose. I was surprised

17:28

at how little color was

17:30

in my wardrobe. Because I think of myself

17:32

as a person who dresses like very colorfully

17:34

all the time, but it only represented a very

17:36

small percentage of what I owned.

17:38

I learned that a lot of the things I have

17:41

go way more together than I thought. I

17:44

thought it was like so all over the place

17:46

and I was such an all over the place person. I

17:49

think your wardrobe

17:49

is much more cohesive. than you thought

17:51

it was. And mine was actually much less cohesive

17:54

than I thought it was. So it's like these

17:56

things that you maybe don't even realize when

17:58

you're shopping or when you're talking.

18:00

about your personal style that's very obvious

18:02

when it's all on a page in front of you. So

18:06

it might sound obvious to say this, but Maxwell

18:08

and Jesse don't have Cher's

18:10

closet.

18:11

They have, through this charming,

18:13

relatively low-tech system, developed

18:15

this powerful tool that has helped them

18:18

figure out their personal styles,

18:20

but it's not exactly what they set out to make. It

18:23

became something different. And

18:27

this is what happens over and

18:29

over again. Every time there

18:31

is any media coverage about a new app

18:34

that's for cataloging clothes, it's always compared

18:36

to the Clueless closet. It's true. Cher

18:39

Horowitz's virtual wardrobe is finally

18:41

reality with this app. Set decorator

18:43

Amy Wells gave it a quick Google. Notice that

18:45

I logged my entire wardrobe into

18:47

a Clueless-style closet app.

18:49

Wow, people are really busy. But

18:52

most of these apps without fail turn

18:55

out to be more like the one that Maxwell and Jesse

18:57

made. OK, you take a photo of this outfit and now

18:59

you have it. Basically, that's literally every single app.

19:02

And Meacham was unimpressed. What you're

19:04

offering is to take photos

19:06

of your clothing and then pick

19:09

it. That's outfit of the day. Let's

19:11

get ready with me. It's not showing

19:13

you anything. It's not doing anything for you.

19:15

And he reckons there would be a way

19:17

more lucrative, savvy

19:19

way to run an app like this.

19:21

it's when you're like online shopping. It'll

19:23

be like, okay, you have this thing in your closet already,

19:26

but don't you need this thing that just went on sale? Don't

19:28

you like those push notifications? Bring

19:31

it together, baby. Like that's what people need to be doing.

19:33

So why aren't people doing it? Bring

19:36

that shopping experience and

19:38

bring it to the app. Why aren't they

19:41

turning this app into a tool for shopping?

19:44

Again, it's not because it hasn't

19:46

been been attempted or that we don't have the technology.

19:50

It is because this whole

19:52

endeavor has a strange hex

19:54

on it, an inherent problem

19:56

with the business model that most of these

19:59

apps do not have a

20:00

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22:12

Wait there's a bunch there's one called closet

22:14

look books scap purple

22:17

outfit planner my wardrobe.

22:19

For the sake of this story I was briefly

22:22

considering downloading one of these closet organizer

22:24

apps and trying them but I

22:27

I don't know, I didn't really want to take the time to photograph

22:29

everything in my closet because I was

22:31

busy making this podcast. But

22:34

also, I never really dreamed of the clueless

22:36

closet for myself.

22:37

I didn't want an outfit planning app because I

22:40

always appreciated that making

22:42

an outfit for me was like the one thing

22:44

I didn't have to plan.

22:46

It just seemed like planning it all

22:48

and regimenting it all would suck

22:51

all the creativity out of getting dressed. I

22:53

don't know, this seems a little rigid to

22:55

me. Well, I think it's pretty much like

22:57

determined upon how you look at creativity My

22:59

friend James is perhaps one of

23:01

the most creative people I know I

23:04

particularly love creativity within

23:06

the bounds of order and structure

23:08

and the app that James uses to plan

23:11

and log Outfits is called

23:13

style book.

23:15

I hadn't heard of it. The only other person I know who uses

23:17

it is my spouse I have to

23:20

say, even if other people do

23:23

use Stylebook or an app like

23:25

it, they probably don't bring it up in casual

23:27

conversation.

23:29

Turns out it's not the kind of thing you just readily

23:31

show people. It's very intimate. Like,

23:33

it feels like I'm doing a lot right now. Because

23:36

Stylebook is, of course, a wide

23:38

open display of your entire collection

23:40

of clothes. But even more

23:42

intense than that, Stylebook

23:45

can display all this data

23:47

about your clothes. Oh my god, you can see what

23:49

colors you wear the most?

23:50

Yeah, do you want to see? Do you want to see mine?

23:52

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

23:55

Will you not be embarrassed by my style stats? Wow. Wow!

24:00

account your total closet value in

24:02

your colors. And oh my god

24:04

the total value of your closet that's wild.

24:08

James has 197 items

24:10

and when you see the collective cost all at once it's

24:13

a lot of money.

24:14

Yeah that's a little much. But

24:16

but but that total closet value

24:19

is not there to try to shame you. We've

24:21

had people who like maybe they

24:23

lost their house in a fire and now they've

24:26

recorded all of clothes and they can use it for

24:28

insurance. Right. Right. Jess Atkins

24:30

and her husband Bill Atkins have been running

24:32

style books since 2009 and they

24:34

cannot see James's closet

24:37

or collective closet cost. We don't know the names of

24:39

people who use our app. We don't know their closets. Like

24:41

that's all their own. Like we we don't and

24:43

can't access it. Bill

24:44

has a background in computer science. Jess

24:47

has a background in fashion. I used to actually

24:49

get mad when people would say that. They're like, oh, you just

24:52

copied Clueless. And I'm like, no, I didn't. I'm

24:54

like, I swear, I actually

24:56

just really needed it. When

24:59

Jess was an intern at Vogue and

25:01

doing other fashion grunt work, she

25:03

was pretty broke. I just didn't

25:05

have access to affordable,

25:07

stylish things, but I was

25:10

really thinking about how many times

25:12

maybe somebody saw me in something, how

25:14

many outfits can I get at one thing?

25:17

So Stylebook is especially

25:19

good at calculating your cost per

25:21

wear to see if you're actually getting the most from

25:23

your clothing. And sometimes a splurge

25:26

turns out to be a good deal. So like I

25:28

have a coat that I bought. It's the most

25:30

expensive coat I've ever bought. And

25:32

I think I spend like 600, $700 on it. And

25:36

I've worn this coat like literally, I was just checking

25:38

the other day. I think it's 275 times. So

25:41

math, that's like less than $3 per wear. And

25:45

that price is only gonna go down more and more

25:47

the more Jess wears that coat.

25:49

Jess said that the average minimum

25:52

use you should get out of a garment

25:54

is 30 wares.

25:56

That's decent value. But again,

25:58

like Maxwell and Jessie. found

26:00

with their app,

26:01

what you think you wear a lot and

26:04

what you actually wear can

26:06

be very different. Sometimes I

26:08

have outfits that I think I just think about a lot

26:10

because I'm like, oh, I've like worn

26:12

that so many times. And then I'll look back

26:15

and stylebook will actually tell you the last time you wore it.

26:17

And it'll say like, one 180 days ago. And

26:20

I'm like, what? So like,

26:22

like sometimes like memory is not as

26:24

reliable as you think. And

26:27

I think that

26:28

is the challenge a lot of people have with shopping.

26:32

So much of shopping as

26:34

an activity, as a pastime, is

26:37

based on this kind of forgetting.

26:41

Forgetting what's already in your closet. And

26:44

so new clothes are sold like a panacea,

26:47

a way to become cooler or more sophisticated

26:50

or more professional or more beautiful. desire

26:53

you might have, there's an outfit poised

26:56

to solve it.

26:58

Forget your old selves, put on

27:00

a new one. Even though most

27:03

of the time we are probably buying

27:05

the same stuff over and over.

27:08

Honestly, 80% of the time I'm

27:10

like I'm in love with this skirt and I like look

27:12

at it with all my other skirts and it's the same skirt.

27:14

And this is why Maxwell

27:17

and Jesse believe apps for

27:19

organizing your closet continue to

27:21

fail. And I've worked in tech for almost 20

27:24

years now. Those apps never last. The

27:27

ones that end up being

27:28

pretty good, maybe,

27:30

like just don't end up getting the customer base

27:32

and the money that they need to continue and they end up getting

27:35

bought or shut down.

27:36

Because if you make the app well, people

27:38

will buy less. That to me

27:41

is like the inherent trade off. So

27:43

far, this has been the story. Anytime

27:46

someone has grown up with the fantasy of wanting

27:49

Cher's closet, and then they decide to make it,

27:51

they realize that the app has to

27:54

be different from the movie. And then they realize

27:56

that rather than promoting sales and shopping,

27:58

what the app does.

28:00

is it just makes you consume

28:02

differently. Like that's at least my belief. You

28:04

can't make it into a good business. Case in

28:06

point, Stylebook added a

28:08

shopping feature where you can shop

28:10

in the app. Yeah, I've never done

28:13

it. James says whenever they feel like

28:15

shopping now, they just put their clothes on shuffle.

28:17

And it definitely makes me feel like, no, you don't

28:19

need that other pair of pants because you have plenty,

28:22

thank you. Yeah. Yeah. But

28:24

what Maxwell and Jesse couldn't figure out

28:26

is how Stylebook has been in

28:29

business. I would love to know

28:31

what the business driver is, how they propose

28:33

this to investors. I'm very curious

28:36

about the motivation, the business motivations

28:38

behind that.

28:39

The answer is that

28:41

there were no investors. There

28:44

are no advertisers. Jess

28:46

and Bill don't even get money or kickbacks

28:49

from their shopping function.

28:51

The two lone employees of

28:53

Stylebook make their money

28:55

full-time, quite literally, from

28:58

selling the app. be charged for the app so

29:00

it's not free. It's $4.99. Yeah,

29:04

well we sold a lot of them. So,

29:07

like we, so, I don't know, that's

29:09

it. I mean it sounds like it

29:11

should be more complicated than that but it's not.

29:15

Like you know, over time, we've sold a lot

29:17

of copies of the app, I mean we have over a million users.

29:20

So like, there's a lot

29:22

of people around the world who are interested

29:24

in this. And I am sure

29:27

a fair number

29:28

of them, directly or

29:30

indirectly, consciously

29:32

or subconsciously, were inspired

29:35

by Clueless. Turns

29:37

out James was. Yeah, so it's absolutely

29:40

from Clueless, absolutely. Wait, really?

29:42

Yeah. Which really

29:45

means that James and

29:47

Maxwell and Jesse and so many

29:49

other closet organizers were

29:51

inspired by the person who wrote the script

29:54

for Clueless and who directed it. This

29:57

is really who the closet came

29:59

from. So I had

30:01

to ask the writer-director point blank, how

30:05

did you come up with the closet?

30:08

When you say closet, there's like two

30:11

things to that. There's the program that

30:13

she has on her computer, and then

30:15

there's the rotating dry cleaner

30:17

closet. Obviously, for my purposes, I'm

30:20

way more interested in the computer program, but the

30:22

answer to the physical dry cleaner closet is

30:24

pretty simple.

30:26

Writer-director Amy Heckerling once

30:28

saw that rotating closet in real life.

30:31

I was in film school and I knew

30:33

this guy who was a big shot in

30:35

music. In his house, he had

30:37

that closet. He had thought it

30:40

up, he designed it.

30:41

The computer program though, that

30:44

idea actually came from working in film.

30:47

When we were doing costumes in

30:49

movies,

30:50

you have Polaroids, so we used to use Polaroids.

30:53

And we would cut them like across

30:55

to see what top went with what bottom mix

30:58

and match. So you have all

31:00

of those pieces that you photographed

31:03

and then you see what goes

31:05

with what like puzzles and

31:08

you go well she looks good in this top but that

31:10

bottom but this is too clunky or this

31:12

you know and I thought well

31:15

that would be a cool thing to put

31:17

in a computer so you could just have

31:19

it easy access. So it

31:21

seemed the obvious thing.

31:23

And it does seem so obvious.

31:26

It's really not so different from

31:29

all those closet apps, actually. You

31:31

know, have you tried any of these apps at all? No.

31:35

I mean- You weren't even curious. Not

31:37

really, I mean, first of all, everything

31:40

I have is black, so it's like, what's

31:43

the weather and which black things

31:45

should I put on? That's how I get dressed. I'm

31:48

so shocked that you're the person who wrote

31:50

Clueless.

31:51

Well, I'm not that girl. Amy

31:55

Heckerling

31:56

is not Cher Horowitz.

32:00

And that's the whole point.

32:02

You could write your own personal stories

32:05

and then you read them and go, I

32:07

hate me. I wouldn't want to read this. So

32:11

you go, well, what kind of characters

32:13

do I like in films? And

32:15

I had made this film Fast

32:18

Times, which Cameron Crow wrote

32:21

and Sean Penn was in.

32:23

And the character that we

32:25

all gave birth to, Spicoli,

32:28

was one of my favorite characters because he

32:31

doesn't realize that the teacher is mad

32:33

at him. He doesn't get that

32:35

he's breaking rules. He's just happy,

32:39

you know? So that kind

32:41

of was strange to

32:43

me because so much stuff is upsetting.

32:46

You know, you read the paper in the morning and you start

32:48

crying. It's just like... So that

32:52

came from like my fascination

32:55

with people that are happy with themselves.

32:58

Not from like, oh, I care about fashion.

33:03

The fantasy of Cher's closet

33:06

was not the fantasy of a computer

33:08

with style. It was not

33:11

the fantasy of a pool house sized

33:13

closet.

33:13

It was the fantasy

33:16

of a person totally happy

33:19

with herself. She's just vibing.

33:22

This is high school. What? In

33:24

that brief closet scene that inspired

33:26

Meacham and so many others, the

33:28

computer, the digital puppet

33:31

truly serves as a metaphor,

33:34

as a window into Cher's mind.

33:38

that scene was ultimately

33:41

a fantasy of selecting

33:43

an outfit effortlessly and naturally

33:47

and with joy because

33:50

Cher was happy with herself.

33:52

And

33:54

that's what all these closet apps are supposed

33:57

to help with, right?

33:58

Even though none of them so F-

34:00

have been Cher's closet

34:02

at all. What these apps do

34:04

is they show you what you're drawn to.

34:06

They present your taste back to you

34:09

for you to see, so

34:11

that you might become happy with

34:13

yourself. And in that

34:15

process, treat style

34:19

as something separate from

34:21

shopping.

34:23

Maybe. I have to go back again to like the stop

34:25

shopping thing, because that's literally not me. That has never

34:28

happened to me in my life. But you

34:30

know, I don't know, I haven't used your friend's app so maybe I don't

34:32

know. We'll see.

34:40

Articles of Interest is a proud member

34:43

of Radiotopia. I made this one

34:45

with help from Charles MacFarlane. And,

34:48

surprise, this is my little announcement. I'm

34:51

going to try to make more episodes more regularly

34:53

about all kinds of Articles of Interest every

34:55

two weeks

34:56

or so.