Thirty One Years Later, Everyone Still Wants the Clueless Closet

Sometimes the best product explanation is the one you never get to finish. This August, as ViWear joined four university Welcome Week events across Amsterdam and Utrecht, students would watch the screen for a few moments and interrupt us: “It’s like Clueless.”

They were referring, of course, to Cher Horowitz’s famous computerised closet. In the 1995 film, Cher scrolls through her wardrobe on screen, experiments with different combinations and decides what to wear before touching a hanger. It was a small scene, but it created one of fashion’s most persistent technology fantasies: a wardrobe you could actually play with.

Three decades later, the comparison came surprisingly easily. ViWear brings a person’s wardrobe into a digital space where clothes can be styled together, virtually tried on and explored alongside new pieces.

During our demonstrations, students often began asking where they could download the app before we had finished explaining it. Others responded with some version of “I need this.” We spend a lot of time talking about AI and virtual try on; on campus, the product barely needed the terminology.