Scan Before You Buy
Scan shows how a garment you are thinking of buying fits with the clothes you already own. Give it a photo of the garment or a link to its product page, and you get a verdict, the closest pieces you already own, outfits the garment would make with your clothes, and the gaps in your wardrobe it would fill.
Who Can Use It
Scan works during your free trial and on a paid subscription. It is not part of the free pass: on the free pass the Scan page shows “Scan is part of the full plan” with a “Start Free Trial” button.
Scan is a Wardrowbe Cloud feature. The self-hosted open-source edition is a separate project and doesn’t include it.
Starting a Scan
On the web, open “Scan” from the sidebar. The page, “Scan before you buy”, has two tabs:
- Photo: drop a photo of the garment onto the upload area, or click to choose one. JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC photos up to 20 MB work. If the photo shows several garments, the main one is scanned.
- Link: paste the address of a shop’s product page into “Product page link” and press “Check this link”. Wardrowbe opens the page and uses its product picture.
Some shops don’t let Wardrowbe read their pages, and some pages have no product picture Wardrowbe can find. In both cases you are asked to save the picture and scan it as a photo instead.
A scan first reads the garment, then puts outfits together from your clothes. If it takes longer than usual you can leave the page: the scan keeps going and waits for you under “Recent scans”.
Scanning the same photo or link again while the first scan is still open gives you that scan back instead of a new one. You can start up to 20 scans an hour.
Scan compares a garment with what you own, so it needs clothes in your wardrobe. With an empty wardrobe, the page asks you to add some first.
The Verdict
Every scan ends with one of four verdicts:
| Verdict | What it means |
|---|---|
| Good fit | It works with what you own and adds something new. |
| Worth a second look | It could work. Look at the details below before you decide. |
| You may already own this | Something in your wardrobe looks very much like it. |
| Add more clothes first | We need a few more of your clothes to judge how it fits in. |
“Good fit” needs the garment to make at least two outfits with your clothes and to either fill a gap or be unlike anything you own. “Add more clothes first” appears when fewer than two of your items have finished tagging; archived items don’t count.
A few short reasons under the verdict explain it, for example when the photo was hard to read. The verdict is a suggestion based on your wardrobe, not a rule.
Close Matches You Own
Up to three of your items that look like the garment, nearest first. Each is labelled:
- Same piece: the photo matches an item you already own.
- Very close: same type, colour, subtype and pattern.
- Similar: same type and colour.
Outfits It Makes
Up to three outfits that combine the garment with your clothes, each with a headline and a styling tip. Outfits are only built when you have at least two items that have finished tagging. If they can’t be built at the moment, the verdict says so and leaves them out.
Gaps It Fills
“Gaps it fills” lists what the garment would add:
- a type of clothing you don’t own yet,
- a type you own only one of (shown only when you have no close match),
- more of one of your favourite colours from your style preferences.
The gap report shows the gaps across your whole wardrobe.
I Bought It
If you buy the garment, press “I bought it”. The “Add it to your wardrobe” form lets you fill in “Price”, “Store”, “Brand” and “Bought on”, all optional, and “Add to wardrobe” adds the item.
The scan’s photo becomes the item’s photo and the tags the scan found are kept, so the item is ready straight away without another round of AI tagging. You can change any detail later on the item. Pressing the button twice adds the item once.
If the photo matches an item you already own, nothing is added and you are offered “View the item you own” instead.
Recent Scans
“Recent scans” lists your latest scans, up to ten. Scans are kept for 7 days and then deleted together with their photos. Press “Discard” to remove one sooner. The photo of a scan that failed or that you discarded is deleted; the photo of a scan you added stays with the new item.
Mobile: Open Scan from the camera icon on the wardrobe tab, or from the “Scan before you buy” quick action on the home screen. The screen has the same Photo and Link tabs, and “I bought it” opens its form as a bottom sheet.