Looksy finds clothes from a single photo or video. You see an outfit somewhere — on a friend, in a store, on a screen — and instead of screenshotting it into a folder you'll never open, you send it to @trylooksy on Instagram and get back garment options with real shopping links.
This is how the whole journey works, start to finish, including the honest edge cases.
Start with the look
Open Instagram, find @trylooksy, and send a photo or video of the outfit. It can be:
- a mirror shot you took yourself,
- a screenshot of someone else's post,
- a video — a walk-by, a pan across a rack, a fitting-room clip,
- a product shot straight from a store page.
You don't need to describe anything. The photo is the message. Once it's in the chat, Looksy takes a look and comes back with what it can see.
One honest note: the demo on the homepage is simulated — it's a scripted example, not a live run through the real service. Real response times vary. A simple single-garment photo is fast; a busy group shot with a dozen pieces takes longer, and sometimes needs a follow-up question from me (the bot side of me, anyway).
Spot it in your feed → share to Looksy
Already looking at an outfit on Instagram? Tap the post's share button and send it to @trylooksy. The look arrives in your DM, where you can pick the piece you want to find. No app or download needed.
Try it in the homepage feed demo: scroll through three original outfit illustrations, send one to Looksy, and tap a garment chip. Go back to share another look with different pieces. The chat and cards are labelled examples, not live search results.
Pick one piece
Most outfits have more than one thing going on. A typical result isn't a wall of links — it's a short list of garment chips: “Jacket”, “Jeans”, “Sunnies”, “Tee”. You tap the piece you actually care about, and Looksy narrows the search to that garment.
This matters more than it sounds. If you're hunting the jacket and I hand you a pair of jeans, that's a miss even if both are technically correct. The chip step keeps the conversation about your goal, not a general-purpose “here's everything I detected”.
Read the match before opening the link
Every result card is labelled, and the label means something:
- Best guess — the closest candidate Looksy found. It's the top attempt, not a promise.
- Similar style — not the same item, but close on the things that usually matter: silhouette, material, colour, vibe.
An exact match and a similar style are different things, and the card tells you which one you're looking at. If the identity of the garment can't be verified from the photo, you'll get the honest version: “I'm not sure it's the exact jacket. Here are similar styles.” No invented percentages, no fake confidence.
Read that label before you open anything. It takes two seconds and it decides whether you're comparing real alternatives or chasing a look-alike.
A worked example
Take the outfit from the homepage demo: a navy work jacket with an orange zip, and sunglasses resting on the collar.
Send that as a photo. Looksy detects two garments and shows two chips: Jacket and Sunnies. Tap Jacket, and because the photo is a single angle with no brand details visible, the honest response is: “I'm not sure it's the exact jacket. Here are similar styles.” Two cards arrive — one best guess, one similar style — each with a real store listing attached, price and availability checked at the retailer.
Tap Sunnies instead, and the same thing happens for the glasses: similar frames, honest labels, real links. Same photo, two different searches, both driven by the piece you picked.
When the match isn't right
Sometimes the first attempt misses. Before you give up, try the things that actually improve the result:
- Crop tighter. One garment per photo beats a full-body shot with a busy background. The jacket on its own, filling most of the frame, is a much easier target.
- Use a screenshot from a video. Videos are great for finding the moment — pause on the frame where the garment is clearest and send that. Motion blur is the enemy of a good match.
- Say what's off. Tell Looksy what's wrong — “too puffy”, “wrong colour”, “that's a bomber, not a blazer” — and the search can be steered toward what you actually meant.
Those correction controls are the ones that work today. I'd rather you send a better photo than have me pretend a blurry crop was identified with certainty.
Buy from the retailer
The scroll ends at the store. When you tap through to a listing, everything that happens next belongs to the retailer: price, stock, payment, delivery, returns, and customer support. Looksy finds the link and shows the match; the store runs the sale. If a listing is dead or a price has moved, that's the retailer's live status — no site can hold the internet still for you.
That's the whole loop: send the look → pick one piece → read the match → open a real listing → buy from the store. If something on that path feels rough, that's exactly the kind of feedback the project is built around — tell me.