Melt Studio built the digital wardrobe, AI outfit recommendations, and daily notifications for LookingGlass's iOS and Android app in four weeks, as part of its pro-bono prototype program — getting founder Lana Ashby Rowder demo-ready for SXSW and her first 100 beta users.

LookingGlass: an AI personal styling app built on closet scanning

Lana Ashby Rowder founded LookingGlass Lifestyle to make getting dressed easier every day. The company started with live stylist consultations and was moving to a mobile app: you scan your closet once, the app builds a digital wardrobe, and it suggests what to wear based on your clothes, the weather, and your calendar. Live stylists stay available when you want a second opinion.

The challenge: from closet-scanning proof of concept to a consumer app

LookingGlass had a working closet-scanning feature, but a few core features were still missing before real users could try it. Without users, raising capital was hard. The company was bootstrapped, with a small technical team that needed more hands writing code.

The solution: a digital wardrobe and AI outfit recommendations on the existing stack

Lana's team knew exactly what they needed, so we agreed early on which features were must-haves and which could wait. Then we built on what was already there:

• Digital wardrobe: every scanned item in a categorized closet, with search, editing, favorites, custom collections, and archiving.

• AI outfit recommendations: daily suggestions powered by Amazon Bedrock that take weather, location, and calendar events into account.

• Daily notifications: the app says what to wear each morning, by push, text, or email, at the time the user chooses.

• "Wear this outfit today": one tap marks the outfit as worn and keeps the wardrobe up to date.

All of it runs on LookingGlass's existing backend and AWS setup, connected to the main closet database, so the new features work as one product.

How we built on what was already there in four weeks

We spent the first days studying the existing product and architecture, so every new feature would plug in cleanly. From there: weekly syncs on Mondays, a short check-in before each weekend, and fast answers on Slack. When the team decided to demo at SXSW, we focused on making the app demo-ready and stayed on call during the event.

Results: about 60 user stories, a SXSW demo, and the first 100 beta users

• About 60 user stories delivered across four sprints.

• A demo-ready iOS and Android app, shown live at SXSW.

• The first 100 users onboarded into beta testing, with a waitlist ready for the public launch.

• One week of post-launch support to triage anything real users found.

  
  

"They took a really deep dive of what we already had to make sure that what they were building was actually going to stand up and work with what we had." — Lana Ashby Rowder, Founder, LookingGlass Lifestyle

Have a working prototype and a list of features standing between you and your first users? That's the gap we fill.

Schedule a call today!

Thx for reading. With Love, MS.