Personal Shopper Site MyShape.com to Debut
MyShape.com, a new shopping Web site aimed at helping women find proper-fitting garments, will debut Sept. 30 with its first stock of apparel, mainly from West Coast resources.
The site is geared toward professional women and others who don’t have a lot of time to shop, said company founder Louise Wannier, an entrepreneur and graduate of CalTech and the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.
The Pasadena, Calif.–based site employs analytical technology, which uses sizing and styling data provided via a 20-question survey from potential customers. The system then matches them with a selection of clothing.
“We match specifications directly to our customers and also employ stylists to provide some expert fashion guidelines,” Wannier said. “Right now, we’re focused on the smaller designers, because we want to offer distinctive styling.”
She said the company was buying from several West Coast resources, such as Arev and Charlotte Tarantola, that offered a contemporary edge and styling that wasn’t over-saturated.
Other vendors include Basil and Maude, Kay Celine, Dancing Couture, Christine Alexander, Drama, Leona Edmiston, Fabrizio Gianni, Farinaz, Harari, Komorov, Lapis, Magdalena, P.K. Maks, Nomadic Traders, Linda Segal, Carol Turner and Courtney Washington.
Former Nordstrom buyer Dianne Starnes is heading up the buying strategies for myShape under Wannier’s guidance. She spent 10 years at Nordstrom and helped to build the retailer’s California business under Betsy Sanders, who now sits on myShape’s board of advisers.
The company’s ShapeMatch technology, which is under patent review, is based on the concept that women fit into one of seven body shapes, ranging from curvy to more symmetrical. For example, for a woman with a curvy S shape, the system may recommend a soft-shoulder line with a defined waistline.
The idea is to take a lot of the guesswork out of the shopping equation, Wannier said. “Women love to shop, but they hate taking up time trying on clothes,” she said. “We want to be their personal shopper, of sorts.”
Wannier co-founded products such as VCRPlus and the technology Web site enfish.com. She hopes to grow myShape to include menswear and other categories such as swimwear, as well as license out the technology to other e-commerce entities. Wannier has so far garnered some big-name support with board members such as Sanders and former Wet Seal Chief Executive Peter Whitford. —Robert McAllister
