This New Tool Could Equal More Likes On Your #OOTD

If you've ever spent a good chunk of time trying to decide which #ootd shot you want to post on Instagram, this new algorithm is here to solve your problems. A new model developed by University of Toronto researchers could tell you how to get more likes on your outfit posts by analyzing pictures of your outfits and giving recommendations based on everything from fashionability to lighting and setting. You may have already mastered the art of the selfie, but street style is a whole other beast to tackle.

"People want to look good; business or casual, elegant or sporty, sexy but not slutty, and of course trendy, particularly so when putting their picture online," they stated in their paper published on Computer Vision Foundation. Well, I'm not sure about the casual slut shaming, but yeah. I'll buy that people want to look good. In order to do this, they made it their goal to develop a program that would provide "rich feedback back to the user, conveying which garments or even scenery she/he should change in order to improve fashionability."

The researchers started by collecting data on over 144,000 pictures on chictopia.com, a website where people can post pictures of their outfits and receive feedback from other users. Because fashion is so relative to personal opinions, this study sought to poll general public opinion to measure fashionability. In a nutshell, they amassed the data to figure out which types of garments, backdrops, and lightings received the most likes or became the most popular on the site. "We base our measure of interest on each post’s number of votes, analogous to “likes” on other websites," the research stated. I'm not sure how I feel about my fashionability being determined by the likes of other people, but it's a cool concept for trend predictions nonetheless.

Their mock-up version of the program rates a user on a scale of 1-10 for fashionability and makes suggestions such as a changing a brown jacket to a black one and staging the photograph in a less "claustrophobic setting." In the sample recommendation, these changes managed to bump a woman's fashionability from a '2' to a '7.' Yeah, I imagine this is what it would be like to have a personal stylist in my closet everyday. Someone please give these guys a grant, because I might need this algorithm to be the next iPhone app.