A Complete Breakdown & Review of the Cladwell App
What is Cladwell?
Cladwell is an app that allows you to digitally “store” everything in your closet. You put in all of the clothing you own and a few details (color, pattern, style), and the app will use this info to suggest weather appropriate outfits each day and give you insights on your wardrobe.
Basically, it’s the real life version of Cher’s closet from Clueless. Unlike some other apps that just store pictures of your wardrobe, Cladwell shines most in the outfit suggestion department.
How much does it cost?
It’s Free!
Cladwell used to be subscription based for about $4 a month (worth it in my opinion), but they’ve moved to a free model. If you are currently using Cladwell and paying for a subscription, they will gladly upgrade you to the Free for Life plan.
How does Cladwell work?
Cladwell is really reallyyyy good at walking you through the process once you create an account.
The first thing you do is create your closet. This means you have to put in all of the pieces in your closet (skirts, tops, sweaters, bottoms, shoes). What I love about Cladwell is that it’s quick and easy to do this, thanks to to their database.
Inside the app there is a picture database of thousands of types of clothing you could possibly own, from snakeskin boots to a red maxi dress, your bases are covered.
You pick the most similar item and add it to your closet, or you have the option to upload your own picture of something you can’t find. I use this option frequently, only because I like things to be exact, not because I can’t find a similar item.
Pro tip: If you upload your own photos you can often find pictures of the item on a white background already from the retailer or google images.
Once you’ve got your closet in, you can start getting outfit suggestions! Each day Cladwell will take into account the weather and suggest three appropriate outfits.
You can tweak the suggestions, refresh the suggestions to generate more, or log your own outfit, if you don’t like any of the outfits.
Logging outfits will give you data in your style profile like the colors you wear most, your most worn items, and how much of your closet you actually wear.
Another fun feature is the ability to create capsule wardrobes within the app. This is the ultimate capsule wardrobe planner app. I’ve made a quick video showing you how you can create a capsule from your closet. There’s no sound, so you can watch on the go!
Style Profile Data
After you’ve added in all of your clothing and logged 10 outfits you’ve worn, you can start to see some data on your wardrobe. As you log more outfits, this data will get more specific.
If you’re impatient like me and don’t want to wait 10 days to start seeing this juicy data, then you are able to go back in the calendar and add outfits you remember you’ve worn. Add 10 and the data will be yours to see!
When you go to your Style Profile, at the top you’ll see your name, the amount of outfits possible with the items in your closet, how many days in a row you’ve logged outfits, and the number of items in your closet.
What is the data?
Percent Worn
Color Palette
Your Go-To Items
Least Worn
Underneath that surface data you’ll see some more nitty gritty stats about your closet.
Percent Worn shows you what percent of items in your closet have actually been worn by you. Cladwell’s goal is to get users to wear their clothes more and go above the average person who wears about 20% of their closet. This stat is really motivating for me to wear more and get rid of things I don’t wear.
In this section you can click on “View Items” and it will show you all the items in your closet. The ones you’ve worn will have a red dot by it.
Color Palette has two parts. Your Most Owned Color Palette shows the top neutrals in your closet and the top main colors with the amount of items for each closet. I’m clearly winning in the neutral department!
Your Most Worn Color Palette shows the colors of the top neutrals and top main colors you’re actually wearing. This is important, because you may own a lot of one color but not actually wear that color much.
I like looking at my color palette to figure out what colors I feel most comfortable in and should probably buy more of. It can also help if you want to branch out and try new colors.
Your Go To Items shows the items in your closet you’ve worn the most. This usually helps me figure out what styles I like and should buy more of and what pieces of clothing might be wearing out from frequent wear.
Your Least Worn Items shows the items in your closet you’ve worn the least or never worn. This can be helpful, but I wouldn’t pay too much attention to it at the start.
When you first create your Cladwell closet it will show things you just haven’t worn yet or things that are off season and you can’t wear right now. So don’t make any major decisions off of this data point until you’ve been using it across seasons.
Here’s a look at my data to show you what it looks like. I recently cleaned out my closet and wasn’t logging outfits for a while, so the data isn’t as robust as it usually is after lots of use. Long term use really is key if you like seeing this data.
Cladwell Pros
The interface is sleek, easy to use, and frankly just prettier than a lot of closet apps!
Outfit suggestions take weather into account (great for those of us who don’t check the weather before getting dressed)
Other apps make you log a lot of data about each item, which can be time consuming and overwhelming
You don’t have to find or take pictures of everything in your closet, you can choose from similar items Cladwell already has in their database
You have the option to upload your own photos if you want more control or can’t find a similar item in the database
If you delete the app it won’t delete your account/closet! This happened to me with Stylebook. I accidentally deleted the app…and my closet with it. Cladwell makes an account with your email address so you just log in if you ever delete the app accidentally or on purpose and want to come back to it later.
You don’t have to log data if you don’t want and can use purely for outfit suggestion help! Their outfit suggestions are reallyyyy good, not hodge podge or random.
Cladwell Cons
There isn’t as much data on your closet as some other apps, like brands or sizes. This might be important to you to see. Pro for some, con for some!
The Least Worn Items takes a while to be accurate, especially if you haven’t been using the app long or have only done it for one season.
You can’t tweak the specifics of the outfit suggestions you want. For example, I rarely wear jackets, but my outfits always add a “layer” like a jacket or sweater. I wish I could remove the layer and have it just show me options with a top, bottom, and shoes. This is nit picky, I know! It would be nice, but it’s easy to just ignore the jacket option or remove it from the outfit.
I want to address one con I’ve seen from a lot of people about Cladwell.
“You can only use the items in the Cladwell database for your closet”
Not true!
You are able to upload your own image that you either copied from the retailer/google or took yourself. I use this option a lot, because I want to see the exact item, not a similar item.
You can also add all of the similar items from the database first and go back and change the picture later, which is a fun feature that lets you set up quickly.
The Verdict
Love it. Get it. Use it. The cons are so small and the app costs you nothing more than a bit of your time to try. I would definitely get in on the app now, because I don’t think it will be free forever!
I’ve really come to enjoy logging my outfits each day and seeing where I could improve in my closet.