Google can design a ‘unique’ dress using your personal data

At Fashion Week in New York City Google announced a partnership with Ivyrevel, an online women’s fashion brand backed by H&M Group for a new project called “Coded Couture” to create customized dresses from user data. As part of this project, the duo has created an Android application that will make use Awareness API that the search giant had introduced at the I/O conference last year.

The Awareness API allows developers to seek quality contextual information about a user’s habits, which can be integrated into offerings by an app. Based on the gathered user information, the Coded Couture ‘data dress’ will be personalized through an Android application, which is currently under development.

The underlying idea is that the API will passively monitor the user’s daily activity like his whereabouts, daily routine, weather and so on. Users can then specify the occasion – business, party or gala – for which they need the dress and a customized data dress appears on the screen. The dress can be further customized by the user before the final checkout.

What’s exciting is that the custom dress design keeps changing over time in response to the user’s latest activity and the final design presents itself after a week’s collection of user input. Of course, users must enable permissions for their everyday data to be monitored and used this way.

Snapshot API is used to track a user over the course of the week and all the users have to do is carry their phone around for the application to work. Furthermore, the materials, silhouette, and personal embellishments are also determined in accordance to the lifestyle of the user. But what’s not clear yet is how? Will the app probe certain questions to get the more intricate details? Well, not much has been revealed on these lines yet.

All the couture techniques claims to design is a dress with a “unique personal story” that the user will be able to relate to. Ivyrevel is currently beta testing the application with select global style influencers, and reportedly giving away some digital dresses for free, although The Verge pointed out that the pricing for the dresses will start from $99 (INR 6,700 approx). For now, users can sign up for the beta version at Ivyrevel’s Coded Couture site. The application is expected to launch publicly later this year.

While this might be ‘the thing’ for a fashionista, what remains to be seen is how many users feel comfortable in letting a mobile device have access to so much of personal data. Then again, something absolutely ‘unique’ just for yourself can sway away concerns over security.