
Building a fashion search engine with deep learning - houqp
https://blog.floydhub.com/similar-fashion-images/
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whatrocks
This similar clothing recommender seems like something that Netflix or Amazon
Prime will add to their pause screens on their original content - letting
viewers purchase similar things to what the characters are wearing right on
screen. I remember searching for years for some dumb shirt that Owen Wilson
wore in some dumb movie, but I was so happy when I finally found something
like it.

~~~
thesehands
That is how ASOS started, As Seen On Screen. Now doing over 2 billion in
turnover a year

~~~
whatrocks
Not surprising at all! Instagram is probably next for this, then. Every single
non-ad post could be a way to sell you the clothes or widgets that your
friends are wearing/using in their fabulous lives.

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ceejayoz
I'd like to see someone tackle sizing.

A 4X dress on Amazon will often wind up being the equivalent of an American
medium because it's from a Chinese vendor. It's baffling to me that Amazon
doesn't make their clothing vendors enter a basic bust/waist/hip set of
measurements and let people search by those.

~~~
web007
I worked on this problem a few gigs back at Polyvore! tl;dr: It's nearly
impossible to solve.

As you may already know, "Standard Sizing" is a misnomer. There is no single
standard for a size. US vs EU vs JP vs other are all the same number (size 4)
but different nominal sizes.

Add to that the chaos of standard sizes between brands (brand A size 4 !=
brand B size 4 != brand C size 4) and even within the same brand (brand A
product 1 size 4 != brand A product 2 size 4) and you find that there's no
single answer to matching a human to a size.

Even your suggestion of measurements won't help without more data around it.
Clothing shape and fabric type matter nearly as much as the measurements,
since one may be a form-fitting 90cm and another may be a breezy and stretchy
90cm. Personal preference matters as well, so you may prefer breezy while I
prefer form-fitting.

~~~
ceejayoz
So I get that it's likely to be impossible to fully solve anytime soon, but
I'd think at least requiring a couple of basic measurements would make a dent.

I've seen exactly what you describe - sizes varying between countries, between
brands, between individual items in a brand. A lot of the listings on Amazon
include a custom size chart now, but it's not _semantic_ data - it's just a
screenshot in the product listing.

Example: [https://www.amazon.com/Beautifulfashionlife-Waisted-
Pleated-...](https://www.amazon.com/Beautifulfashionlife-Waisted-Pleated-
Cosplay-Costumes/dp/B01179J4S6/)

This one lists a XXXX-Large as a 34" waist, and a Large as a 28" waist. It
shows up if you search Amazon for "plus size skirt"; if Amazon made vendors
put in the waist measurements and let them be filterable based on that,
someone in a US size 18 dress wouldn't be offered this as an option.

Again, I get the difference between a 90cm loose fit and a 90cm tight fit. I
_should_ be able to tell a major ecommerce site "look, I'm 150cm... fuck off
with the 90cm stuff".

~~~
web007
That would be great to get as a measurement and filter by. It still won't
solve the problem you want it to.

This is a product with 1 measurement, maybe 1.5 if you count length. Due to
flare, waist position, ratio to waist, etc. the length is subjective even with
an absolute value assigned. Providing those measurements in this one case will
help, but then you have to deal with "skirts" as a whole category with many
sub-categories. And your measurements need to apply universally, so you need
style, waist, waist position, length, flare, hobble and more. Broad categories
for any of them won't help you, so "> 150cm" is not going to help beyond an
existing "plus size" filter. Where the skirt sits matters too, so 150cm is
fine for
[https://amazon.com/dp/B01G0YFAWM/](https://amazon.com/dp/B01G0YFAWM/) but not
for [https://amazon.com/dp/B07HB2NXPY/](https://amazon.com/dp/B07HB2NXPY/) .

[https://amazon.com/dp/B01KXBI2VE/#g2s2SizeChartView_15496401...](https://amazon.com/dp/B01KXBI2VE/#g2s2SizeChartView_1549640103404)
shows they have the data in some cases. There's a proper HTML chart with all
the measurements as "Size Chart" in the pictures section. I would love
infinite knobs to filter on every aspect, but most people (as proved per $
spent) prefer fewer simpler options for how to find products.

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petard
Working in this area the biggest challenge is getting the details right. Small
difference like cut-outs on a dress make a huge difference in terms of end-
user relevance. Same for colors, millennial orange comes in many shades. Deep
Learning is pretty bad with such details.

