Megu / Blog / What to Wear Today? How a Weather-Aware Outfit App Decides
What to Wear Today? How a Weather-Aware Outfit App Decides
The question is old and the answer used to be "look out of the window". A what-to-wear app answers it before you are up. Here is what it is doing.
Step one: which hours count
A daily forecast is a high and a low. Neither is the temperature you will be standing in. If you leave at eight and are back by six, the 5 a.m. low and the 3 p.m. high are both mostly irrelevant. The app that dresses you well is the one that looks at the hours you are actually outdoors and dresses you for those. Megu does this; it reads the forecast for your outdoor hours, not the day's extremes, and treats rain in those hours as a fact rather than a percentage.
Step two: which pieces qualify
Given the conditions, some of the closet is simply out. Linen at four degrees, a wool coat at twenty-eight. The app filters those first. Then it filters for what the day is for, if you have told it: an office day, a wedding, a Sunday. What is left is the pool the look is built from.
Step three: building the look
From the pool, the app assembles a top, a bottom, shoes, and a layer if the hours need one, checking that the pieces go together. Colour, formality and season all have to agree. A good app also remembers what you wore yesterday and does not offer it again, and knows which pieces you keep swiping past.
That last part matters more than the rest. A look built by rules is fine on day one. A look built by rules plus a month of your swipes is the one you put on without thinking.
Step four: you get to say no
The look is a proposal. In Megu you swipe right to wear it and left to see the next one, and if only one piece is wrong you tap to swap that piece and keep the rest. Every one of those actions teaches the app something, so the second week's looks are better than the first's without you doing any configuring.
Where it goes wrong, honestly
- An empty closet. Ten pieces make a small pool; the same look keeps coming back. Add more, starting with what you wear most.
- A bad photo of a good piece. If the cut-out looks wrong, you will swipe past it every time, and the app will learn that you dislike a shirt you actually love. Fix the photo.
- Diurnal days. Cold morning, warm afternoon. No app can put a coat on you at eight and take it off at two; the best it can do is a layer you can shed. Expect that answer on those days.
Questions
How does a what-to-wear app know the weather?
It uses your location to fetch a forecast, then dresses you for the hours you are likely to be outdoors rather than for the day's high and low. Location is only needed for this; without it the app dresses you without a forecast.
What if I do not like the outfit it suggests?
Swipe to the next one, or swap the single piece that is wrong and keep the rest. Each choice teaches the app what you actually wear.
Open your closet.
Megu photographs your clothes, polishes each piece into a studio shot, and has a look ready before you are out of bed. iPhone, iOS 18 or later, with a free trial.
Keep reading
- Dressing for the Weather: Why the Forecast Isn't the Answer — The daily high and low are the wrong numbers. How to read a forecast for getting dressed, and how a closet app should be doing it for you.
- How to Plan a Week of Outfits in One Sitting — A Sunday-evening method for laying out seven looks that do not repeat, survive a change in the weather, and leave room for the day that goes sideways.
- Why Most Closet Apps Get Abandoned on Day Twelve — The three places a digital closet dies: the first evening, the first ugly cut-out, and the first morning with nothing waiting. How to get past each.