Your in-app avatar is called your Doppl. The app encourages you to upload a full-body photo taken in bright light with no hat and a natural pose. As soon as I downloaded the app last Friday -- immediately upon learning it existed, mind you -- I set about trying to do that, but all of my photos got rejected, one after the other. My camera roll is flush with well-lit, full-body shots of me -- I love fashion, I love social media, and I eventually sell all my clothes, using photos of myself wearing them in the listings. This shouldn't have been as hard as it was. Ultimately, a random mirror selfie from the gym was accepted by the app and I got to work.
Since then, I've tried creating more Doppls. You're allowed to have a collection of them in there so you can see how the clothes you like would look in different poses and settings. Only two more, a picture of me in a swimsuit on a boat with a stupid look on my face and a photo of me in the corner of a restaurant, were accepted. I've tried to create maybe 20 Doppls; only three have been accepted. I didn't get any feedback, like, "try standing closer" or "try to find better lighting." There was no explanation for the rejection.
Last Friday, I tried over and over to get Doppl to perform its only function, which was to show me how I'd look in an outfit I found online. I screenshotted a Zimmermann dress I thought was pretty, tapped the + button in the bottom menu, and hit the button that says TRY A LOOK. I would be taken to a loading screen, but nothing ever loaded. All morning, I tried repeatedly. Sometimes, the app bugged out and force-closed. Other times, it stayed on that loading screen forever. I gave it some grace; it had just been released and was probably a little buggy.
It finally worked last night. After about 10 seconds of the loading screen, Doppl presented me a mockup of how I'd look in the Zimmermann dress. Most impressively, the AI had recognized that the dress had lantern sleeves that tighten at the wrist and had replicated how those might look in the pose shown in my avatar, with my hand up to hold my phone while I snapped a mirror selfie.
I tried again with some Agolde shorts and got a sloppy, ill-fitting mess. Yes, it showed me how they'd look on me broadly, but it wasn't any better than using my imagination. In fact, it was kind of worse.
The app also randomly generated some pictures of me wearing pink skinny jeans, which was very 2009 of it, but not very interesting to me, as it's not 2009.
Once your Doppl is dressed in the outfit you've selected from a screenshot, you allegedly have the option to "animate" it to "see how an outfit might look in motion." I tried this with the Zimmermann dress, the Agolde shorts, and the weird picture of me in pink pants. It did not work at all. There was no animation or movement. I assume this will be worked out in future updates, but it was a little disappointing.
I buy and sell clothes constantly and I know that there are many elements that determine if a piece of clothing is right for someone. I'm very particular about waist size, for instance, preferring to see it represented in inches rather than a size like "XS" or "23." Because I'm exactly five feet tall, I'm also always worried about inseams -- getting pants hemmed is not only expensive, it also reduces an item's resale value and makes them look funny on me. If the part of the pants designed to hit at a taller woman's calf is hemmed and hitting at my ankle, it looks ridiculous, stiff, and floppy.
Doppl doesn't care about all that. At no point did I have to enter in my sizes, nor did I have to input the sizes of the screenshotted garments I was forcing it to superimpose on my body. I'm quite positive that both the dress and the shorts would not hit at the part of the leg Doppl guessed they would if I were to actually order them and try them on in real life.
