AI-Powered Styling: Rethinking Sustainable Fashion ft. Julia Dietmar (OpenWardrobe)

Today, we are exploring the powerful intersection of possibly three of my favorite things: fashion, technology, and (of course) sustainability. Julia K. Dietmar, Co-Founder and CEO of OpenWardrobe, joins us to discuss the shift from fast fashion to personalized AI-powered styling. Julia shares how her platform is helping consumers rediscover the value of what they already own—while tackling the growing issue of fashion waste. 

For more than 20 years, Julia has been a product leader, fashion tech enthusiast, and retail innovator. In 2021, Julia and her team launched OpenWardrobe with the purpose of providing actionable consumer data to apparel brands for better insights and demand forecasting to reduce overproduction.

Before co-founding OpenWardrobe, Julia was the Chief Product Officer of Sequoia-backed Vue.ai – an AI for Retail company – where she worked with dozens of apparel brands around the world helping them personalize the customer experience. Julia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. 

I really enjoyed chatting with Julia, and loved diving into conscious consumption, and reimagining what it means to dress with purpose.

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[Host: Lauren Scott] Welcome back to another episode of The Resilience Report. Today's going to be a really interesting one, because in the past we've had episodes, actually several episodes on sustainability and fashion. We've also had a number of different episodes focusing on how technology and sustainability can intersect. But today we're actually bringing the 2 together. We're bringing both fashion and technology with a phenomenal entrepreneur who is here to talk all about her business. So Julia, welcome to the show.

[Guest: Lisa Dietmar] Thank you for having me, Lauren.

So I think the term fast fashion is probably one that most of our listeners are becoming familiar with it, overall. But I would love if we could start, maybe 1st at a high level. If ever we happen to have any listeners who are less familiar with the term. But then, really, how you were thinking about fashion differently, with OpenWardrobe.

Yeah, absolutely so fast fashion, I think it started with Zara and H&M. I don't know which one exactly coined that term. But those 2 companies are associated with fast fashion, and now Shein also joined them. So the term really came about from the fact that they have accelerated the whole supply chain and made it so that consumers get products from inception to store in as less than 6 weeks.

Traditional fashion kind of a slow fashion, if you will, usually takes 18 months, 12 to 18 months to conceptualize the collection, start planning production, and until it hits stores. Xo fast fashion, instead of having kind of traditional 4 seasons, they have 52 seasons a week. So basically every week they have new collections coming to the store. So that's where the term came from. So it's really fast. And then the whole idea is about giving consumers new to look forward to and buy every week. So that's that's where it came from.

And what we're trying to do, we're really kind of trying to flip the script on fast fashion and help people make more of what they already own instead of putting value on new. So we're trying to put value on quality what you already have. Maybe it's a sentimental value. Maybe it's just really something that you have owned and loved and can wear several different ways. So at the core of the platform is really what it's about. It's about visibility. It's really having ability to see what you own, understand, what you own, understand what works for you, for your body, for your lifestyle, and if you have all of that, then you make more intentional choices.

For example, our AI stylist helps people rediscover their clothes by just giving simple suggestions on how to remix them. A lot of us when we buy something we buy it kind of to wear it with something else. It's kind of how we shop right especially. I know a lot of men who just walk in a store. See something on a mannequin like, okay, I buy the full outfit, and that's how I wear it. There's not a lot of creativity, and what we're helping with is just to spark that creativity and rediscover, how to wear clothes that you already own.

So that's basically what it is. And then, on top of that, we offer services like alterations, repairs. We integrate with resale platforms. And it's all kind of at your fingertips. So this circular economy piece is built into the platform, and we're making it easier to extend life of each garment and shift from mindset of consumption, and putting value on new to one of care and creativity.

And was there a kind of “Aha moment” for you in terms of creating OpenWardrobe? Or was it more of a general build, of seeing maybe, just how disposable a lot of people view our different fashion pieces. Was it a moment in time, or what did that journey look like to create the business itself?

Well, it really kind of that idea came from really 2 things. It was frustration, my own frustration with my own closet and opportunity, and plus I spent many years working in fashion, tech and retail tech in general, and I could see how much focus was on innovation and on selling more and faster.

But no one really was talking about helping people make sense of what they already had. So that was kind of the big opportunity I saw. And I also heard from many people, you know, friends, colleagues, that they have nothing to wear, despite having overflowing closets, right? Very common problem.

And I realized that the missing layer was really the context. So OpenWardrobe was born to kind of bring together data, design, personal insight, personal creativity, to have people feel good in what they already own.

And I think it's so interesting too, bringing in the technology piece, because again, we've had other episodes where you've been talking about sustainable fashion, maybe from a material standpoint or from a sourcing standpoint. But I really do think that there's something with intersecting technology, with whatever area you're trying to make more sustainable. So can you speak to that, especially if you have that deep kind of online, retail experience as to what role does technology play in that adoption of maybe change behavior. And hopefully, in this case it is sustainable behavior.

Yeah, absolutely. So I view technology as an enabler.

Well, it helps shift our behaviors, and it helps shift our behaviors at scale, right? Not just individuals, but everybody. In our case we use AI to analyze user’, wardrobes to recommend outfits and just kind of help them remix things. We provide kind of styling tips we provide, I already mentioned, responsible next steps in lifecycle of a garment like resale repairs, alterations.

And what we're seeing is that by making those action very seamless and easy and personalized, we lower the friction that often stands in the way of sustainable choices. So when we talk about sustainability and supply chain and materials and sustainable practices, better dyes and so on. It's all great, and it's very, very important conversation.

But we at OpenWardrobe, we kind of realized that the focus on industry is there already. A spotlight is there, and we decided to focus on the consumer and help consumers make better choices without feeling like they have to sacrifice anything or pay more money for sustainable brands, or do a lot of research. It's just all through this technology and tools and being able to bring it all together.

And beyond fashion, I think tech can in general help reframe consumption mindset across industries. Right? So it's really kind of moving from passive ownership to active stewardship if you will.

I love that. And I really do feel like that is going to be such an important part of that path. And I work in a very different world. I work in energy consumption, and we are leaning on technology to help reduce energy consumption. We're also leaning on tools powered by AI in that adoption and in refining our technology.

I'm personally often finding myself kind of at odds of well, AI is very energy, hungry. And then, at the same time, we're trying to save energy. How do you strike that balance between leveraging a tool like AI, that as it stands right now is very, very energy intensive with finding these more sustainable solutions.

Yeah, it's a big tension. Of course, it's a big balance that we need to take into account. AI has a very big potential to drive massive efficiencies in many different industries, not just fashion. But it also, as you said, comes with a real environmental cost. For us, that means being more intentional about what we built and how we build it. We use AI to reduce overconsumption, but we also can help with reducing overproduction through the data that we have about what consumers have and how they use what they have. We could potentially help with over reducing overproduction. If done at scale, it can offset carbon footprints many times over. Just think about fashion in terms of its environmental impact. If it was a country, it would be the 3rd largest polluter in the world.

But we also advocate, for we advocate for smarter infrastructure, transparency and really kind of investing in more mindful mindfulness enabled tools when when it comes to consumption.

Well, which is why I love that OpenWardrobe also leans into the education piece. I think for the most part, we as consumers, we're not necessarily making quote unquote bad decisions on purpose. But sometimes we just don't necessarily know better. I think fashion, we're starting to get there. But I'm sure the statistic you just shared most people are not aware of. So how do you think about education as you're bringing the consumer along with you?

Yeah. So so you already mentioned, like the tech that we have. But in my opinion, the tech without that education piece is just automation. 

So what we want to do is really we want to empower people. And we kind of joke that empower ow stands for OpenWardrobe in that word. So we do want to empower them, to make better decisions, not to just tell them what to do or tell them what to wear or how to wear it. 

So we build interactive guides. We build. We're partnering with industry experts on kind of creating mini workshops and mini master classes that really teach people to understand what you know how to look for quality, for example, or or even things like, how do you understand. You probably can look in the mirror and say, this looks good on me, or this doesn't look good on me, but you probably do not understand why.

By teaching you this “why”, then, you kind of make better choices, or if I know that orange, however, I try, is not going to look good on me. I'm going to stop trying because it looks good on my friend right? And buying that thing that I will never wear, or I will toss it or whatever. So so this education piece, I think, is very important. So combining the 2 is really where empowerment coming from is coming from.

And I would also love to look at, I guess, kind of an extension of education. But it seems we're talking about this at the top that the average consumer. Yeah, I would say, the average household is now becoming familiar with the term of fast fashion, and maybe the negative consequences of that. What do you still view as the the biggest barrier? I mean? I'm sure there's certainly a component we don't want to neglect of accessibility in terms of there's a large section of the of the population that would benefit from lower cost items.

However, there are a lot of folks who, I think, can afford it, and maybe just aren't necessarily making those decisions. So where do you see the largest barrier right now?

I think it's really, I think there's a lot of education materials and talking about materials, dyes, supply chain, and how we can make that better. The blind spots, in my opinion, right now is really in what happens to that garment after we buy it, and after we've worn it for several times. So a lot of people don't even realize that for a garment to be considered sustainable it needs to be worn around 30 times at least 30 times.

And with the current consumption levels, we wear them on average 7 times. And that's average right? So many more are just worn a couple of times, and then tossed or or discarded somehow. So this kind of the another thing is what what people are not realizing a lot of times is how much resources it takes to produce a single garment. So people know, “Oh, you know, producing clothes takes a lot of water”. How much water actually does it take? And a lot of people don't even know. This number is that it takes as much water to produce. One single T-shirt takes 713 gallons of water, or 2,700 liters of water. So it's enough for a single person to drink for more than a year. And then if we extend the life of our clothes but just 9 months, we reduce this environmental impact by 30%. So how do we do that?

And it's already after we bought it? Right? So this, after purchase, what happens? How can we? It's not just we talk a lot about how to make smarter decisions about choosing sustainable brands. But how do we make sustainable what we already own? I think that's where the blind spots are right now.

I completely agree. And I'm also realizing I should probably stop nagging my husband, who's wears the same T-shirts from before we started dating 14 years ago, so he's probably amortized that T-shirt very well.

Yeah, mine is the same way he wears it and does until it falls apart.

As you look ahead for OpenWardrobe, what is your hope for the business? Is it maybe extending to a broader range? And on a more large scale, I guess, what is your hope for the fashion industry overall.

Well for OpenWardrobe. I'd love for it to become a go to platform for personal style. That's both expressive and responsible. So we're not about selling you more. We're all about teaching you how to use what you already own. So that means expanding our services, maybe integrating more with within the ecosystem. Right? Like we, we already partner with even personal stylists. We don't have yet wardrobe organizers yet right? We don't have shoe repair yet. So expanding those services beyond what we already have and really continuing to scale our AI in thoughtful ways. So our AI is gaining more skills every day. But more broadly, I really want to see the world we're taking care of our clothes is just. The school is buying something new because fast fashion kind of conditioned us over the last decade or so to put value on newness instead of putting value on quality and care. So that's that would be that would be great if that happened. And I actually see already those shifts happening.

I see people making better decisions when buying. I see people taking care. There's there's a lot of even on social media. There's a lot of content around mending, and taking care of or upcycling and teaching people how to how to do that. So so that's great. Maybe the shift, the shift is already happening. We'll see how it goes.

Definitely becoming friends with a tailor if I'm not handy myself, so making friends with a tailor has been phenomenal. But I also recognize my own conditioning. For example, the other day I was looking at a local Quebec designer based in Montreal, and I thought, “Oh, it's been a really long time since they released something new”. But it was just last season. But we're so now conditioned to view. Oh, refresh the page! One week later they should have something new. But it is really just within the past decade, maybe 2 decades that we've built up this expectation as consumers, even sustainable consumers. So I think it will be a re-education for ourselves as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

In working in this space now, and the deep experience on online retail, but then now crossing over to the sustainability side, how has it impacted your own fashion, and the way you look at the way you purchase and maintain your clothing.

Yeah, I changed a lot. It used to be. And I kid you, not. It used to be a garment. I would buy something new every week.

And my and my closet got completely out of control, and it kind of hit me during Covid that I had so much clothes, and I wasn't wearing it. And and this is when I really kind of started noticing that. Oh, my gosh! I didn't wear this for a year, or I didn't wear that for 2 years.

That's when I when I really that's actually when OpenWardrobe was born. It was it was during Covid that idea was born. And now, since I have this, I use our AI every day when I get dressed, I'm like, Okay, I know I want to wear this pair of pants. How would I style it? Very quickly? And then I just pull out something, and then just put it on, and it looks good, and in many cases I get the same feedback from from our users. I would not have thought myself to pair those 2 or 3 things together and and then it looks good. And then I get compliments. And I'm like, Okay, I can get a lot more use out of this. So yeah, I definitely changed. My closet is still a mess. I still need to organize it, but I'm getting there slowly but surely.

Which is great, though, because it sounds like, you know, you're thinking maybe a future added service is the wardrobe organizer, that sort of thing. So you can pressure test, and to see what could be those steps that you would enjoy as a consumer. For ultimately your customer, base as well.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And if we do have listeners who are thinking, what does that process even look like? So is it taking pictures of all your individual pieces. Those get uploaded because I'm sure right now, as our listeners are listening to you share how it's impacting your own day to day decisions. What does that even look like if they want to get set up with OpenWardrobe?

Yeah, I mean, it's really just kind of building your closet digitally, right? So you can either take pictures of your clothes, you can pick from a catalog of common items like thinking. Everybody has a white T-shirt or a pair of blue jeans and stuff like that. So if you have already something similar. You can start. You can start with that. We have a browser extension from which you can very easily just as easy as adding to pinterest. For example, you can very easily add stuff to your wardrobe from if you're buying online. So you go to your orders page, and then you just pick from there. We also have integrations with some stores where you can just go directly into your orders page, and just import orders into into the app. So we have many different ways to help you. 

I do have to say, though it was very interesting for me to even look at that statistic. We have millions and millions of items uploaded. With all these methods, 93% is people taking photos of their clothes. And a lot of our users say, yes, it takes time but I spent the weekend on it, and oh, my God, it's still worth it!

People have emailed me saying, you cured my shopping addiction. Another person emailed saying, I used to have a huge closet, always felt like I have nothing to wear now. I have much smaller closet, and I can go for a year without repeating an outfit. So it's been very kind of rewarding getting those emails and messages. So yeah, if you can spend the weekend, and I always say, start with 10, 10 will take you 15 min. It's not that long. Start with 10. Try that. Then go up to 30, 30, actually 30 is a really good number, because it's a typical size of a capsule wardrobe. Take 30 items, shoes included by the way, take 30 items of what you where most often, and start with that, and then see how that helps. And then, you know, slowly, slowly, you can build up. We have people with thousands. I don't know who those people are, but we have people that's up to them with thousands of items. We have one woman who has 156 handbags.

Wow!

So we have some crazy closets in our system. But on average it's about 200-220 items. So it doesn't take too long to upload it. And you get a lot of value out of it.

You can see how that also just even helps you to do your kind of frontline closet cleanup by taking everything out as you're taking the pictures. You can also kind of sort what you already realize, you haven't worn in the past 3 years to your point. 

So that is really neat, and I'm sure your background, as you're mentioning before founding the company has opened different doors. You were also at 1 point part of the Forbes Technology Council. And I just thought that was really interesting. What does that even entail? And was there any learnings that you got from that experience that you were able to bring over to OpenWardrobe?

Forbes Technology Council is basically a bunch of freelance writers that write about technology and typically like to to get a membership. You you. It's it's not a very difficult process. They just give you an interview, and then they determine that you do have a technical background, and you can be an expert in something. And then you just write. I wrote, I didn't write too much. I wrote about AI in early days. I wrote about computer vision.

It's a pretty good platform to exchange ideas and really stay plugged into what's happening in the tech world specifically. So, yeah, I contributed through some some articles. And the the best thing is also it's that Forbes Technology Council is a very good network of people who are maybe other founders or technologists working in big companies and just a good ideas exchange. 

And that can be a great tip, too, because we have a number of listeners who are entrepreneurs or business leaders. So I think that that's one great path for them to explore after this episode. I was curious, as well, do you have any advice for business leaders who are listening, or founders who are for the 1st time thinking of maybe going down the path of their area of expertise, but then layering on sustainability. Do you have any tips that you've learned over the past few years that you maybe wish you had known when you launched this back in 2021?

I think, and this is what I learned with even OpenWardrobe. Sustainability is not kind of layered on. It needs to be built into what you're doing. 

So for us. It was built into the platform from the very beginning, and it's 1 of the core values. And whenever we think about what to do next, or what to build next, or who to partner with, we always look at this through the lens of: Is this going to help further our mission of keeping close out of landfills and keep helping people shop and sustain more sustainably or more mindfully, and help people reuse what they already have. So that was kind of inherently built. So that would be my point of view. I'm sure there are different businesses that can look at it slightly differently. But for us this was very much core of the platform.

I think that helps avoid what a lot of companies who maybe jumped on the bandwagon over the past few years, and now, with the current climate are deciding to retract some of those efforts. So I think, if it is core to your operations, you completely avoid the greenwashing conundrum, and is really, truly part of who you are as a business.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you're an entrepreneur in the fashion and the technology space. I can't really imagine 2 worlds that maybe have more pressure all coming together on a founder. As you are building this company, building this community, how do you get back to yourself so that you can continue to grow this and really feed into this broader vision.

So for me, I mean, you mentioned community. Our community has been absolutely fundamental, and there are there are days when I just like, “Oh, my gosh! This is so hard! It's not working, or that is not done the way.” And then I get an email from somebody saying, “Oh, my God, your your platform helped me so much. Thank you.”

There is a woman that said, I have, ADHD, and looking at the messy closet, just gives me stress and anxiety. Having this platform help me just feel sane. And you know things like that which I never even thought about that person when I designed it. But when I get email like this, this really kind of reinvigorates me. So community is important and just being out and about, I mean, I've been doing this I mentioned since Covid, and there are good days. There are bad days, of course, so just kind of staying a little bit plugged into our mission and going getting back to why are we doing what we're doing and not? It's very, very difficult. It's very difficult to not be bothered or or distracted by what others are doing, what the competitors are doing, how they're approaching this so kind of getting back. And I'm still working on myself to get to that point every time. It's very hard, but it helps.

And if our listeners, because I'm sure at this point, are super curious to learn more and want to possibly join that community, where would you recommend that they go check out first?

So start with our website. We have openwardrobe.co, it's our corporate site. From there you can get to the app, or you can go straight to openwardrobe.app.

It's available on the website, or you can just download it from your app store on Apple or Google. So we have mobile apps. We have web app. Whatever is more convenient for you.

Fantastic. Well, I know I'll personally be going and playing around with it, seeing the different formats, and if our listeners want to check it out as well, if you go to the app store you can kind of get an idea of the interface as well. It's really streamlined, so I can see how you got that feedback that it kind of created a sense of calm for somebody who is feeling overwhelmed by their wardrobe as well.

Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, and we do like to end every episode with the same question which I'd love to hear from you, which is what do you think it will take for businesses and leaders to be resilient, going forward.

Oh, gosh! It's a it's a very good question. I again I'm going to repeat myself, but I think, having a very clear value for why you're doing what you're doing. And this is this is for me being a very big source of strength and source of kind of being able to wake up in the morning and keep going. So yeah, so the why, just why, why are we doing what we're doing? And it it helps. It helps to get through hard times, and there are a lot of those when you're building your your own business.

Absolutely well, we're so lucky that you channeled all of that deep experience, and you're bringing it to such a really interesting, sustainable solution. Again, we have listeners who are very passionate about fashion, very passionate about technology. So I'm excited for them to learn a little bit more about where those worlds interact.

Yeah, amazing.

Great. Well, thank you so much, Julia. It was fantastic talking to you.

Thank you, Lauren. Thanks for having me here.