Closet - Clothing Organized Review

Not just for the fashionista set, clothing organizers like Closet are awesome for clothing-adverse people. In fact, they probably work even better for the fashion-unconscious, as they provide a visually appealing and lower-stress way to organize and assemble outfit options in private.

In order to realize the app’s full potential, a startup commitment is required, and then regular maintenance is needed to keep the database up to date. Everything needs to be photographed and entered individually with associated metadata, but once this is done the fun begins. Closet offers several different ways to visualize outfit possibilities. Start with the outfit tab and choose a category — some common ones, like "Casual" and "Work", are already provided — create a new outfit. Pay attention, because this is where all the time spent entering and classifying clothing really pays off. If "Item Grid (All Items)" is selected, Closet will create sort of an outfit spinner that’s very easy to flick and choose parts of the outfit.

Not feeling inspired? Toss fashion fate to the wind and hit the "Random" button, and Closet will concoct an outfit instantaneously. If it turns out to be a keeper, the outfit can be marked as a "Favorite.

The thumbnail pictures in Closet's default view are really too small to see clearly. Fortunately an alternate landscape mode gives a much clearer view. Individual items can also be tapped to see them full-size.

Closet also makes it easy to window shop from the web in a store. See blouse that would be perfect with that pair of shoes? Snap a picture (or save it from the web), create a new wardrobe item in Closet, and try it out with other items already owned.

For those who like to plan ahead, like for an upcoming vacation, Closet allows users to assign outfits to different days on a calendar. Additionally, buried in the "Tools" area is the option to create a Packing List, which is basically an unhelpful text input box.

After spending all that time entering wardrobe items nobody wants to lose the data, and Closet thoughtfully offers a backup option (a .zip file accessible via iTunes). For those who are curious, the app will also offer wardrobe stats, so a girl can tell at a glance how many shoes she really has.

Overall, Closet is a highly polished and very functional app. A couple nitpicky UI points: imported photos, whether they are taken from the Camera Roll or saved from the web, are cropped around the edges, so when taking them be sure to leave some padding on all sides so clothing items can be seen clearly. I noticed in a few places the font size was too small to read comfortably, especially in the aforementioned "Packing List" area. Lastly, it would be nice to be able to create a new outfit without having to select a category first, but this can be worked around by choosing the "All" category and then reassigning the correct category later.