Why I built Closet Remix — a wardrobe app that starts with what you already own

I need to tell you what today actually means to me.

Closet Remix is now live on both the App Store and Google Play. Two little store listings. To most people, just another wardrobe app appearing in the search results. To me, the distance between those two listings and where this started is the whole story of my working life.

Sixteen years inside the fashion industry

I spent sixteen years in fashion — as a pattern cutter and designer, working across brands most of you would recognise. I loved the craft. I still do. Pattern cutting teaches you something profound: a garment is never just fabric. It's decisions, hours, hands, skill. Nothing about a well-made piece of clothing is disposable.

But the industry I loved kept telling people the opposite. Buy more. Replace faster. Last season's you is not enough. And I watched wardrobes — including my own — fill up with pieces worn twice and forgotten, while the feeling of "nothing to wear" somehow got worse, not better.

Somewhere along the way I stopped being able to un-see it.

From pattern cutter to app founder

So I retrained. I did a Master's in Digital Fashion and fell in love with what technology could do when it served clothes instead of selling them. I stood on a TEDx stage and said out loud what I'd been thinking privately for years. And I started Fashion Fusion, our community interest company in Doncaster, because I'd learned that sustainability isn't a lecture — it's people in a room together, mending, making, learning, laughing. The community taught me more than the industry ever did.

What community work taught me about collaboration

If Fashion Fusion has taught me one thing, it's that everything is more meaningful when it's done together. The best projects we've delivered haven't been ours alone — they've come from working alongside other CICs, community groups, individuals and organisations, each bringing what we have to the table.

When people come together to share resources, experiences, knowledge and wisdom, something shifts. The projects become more grounded and more fulfilling — the kind that connect people to nature and to creative practice, that move through different venues and spaces, and that are genuinely fun to be part of. None of us could make them alone, and that's exactly the point.

That spirit runs right through Closet Remix. It was built the same way our community projects are: collaboratively, generously, and with people at the centre.

Closet Remix is everything those years taught me, built into something you can hold in your hand.

An outfit planner that starts with your own wardrobe

It's the app that starts with what you already own. It catalogues your wardrobe and finds the outfits hiding in it. It reads your colour palette from the clothes you actually love. It builds capsule wardrobes from fifteen pieces up, plans your week of outfits, shows you the cost per wear of every piece, and — the part I'm proudest of — asks whether you really need to buy before you shop.

I don't know of another styling app that tries to talk you out of spending money. Mine does.

What it took

I won't pretend the road here was smooth. Building an app as a founder without a tech background means learning everything the hard way. But this is where my resilience and stubborn determination kicked in — because I'd done this before. When I took on my Master's in Digital Fashion, I left no stone unturned and moved completely away from the traditional fashion training I'd built my career on. If I could reinvent myself then, I could do it now.

So instead of saying "I can't do this," I changed the question. How can I do this? What tools are available to me now? How far can I get, how much can I do myself — and where will I need help? I turned frustration into action, because I felt too strongly that this needed building. Honestly, there were times it felt less like I was pushing the idea and more like the idea was pulling me.

And the urgency was real. Once I could see what this could become, I couldn't slow down. Wedding planning got pushed to one side. So did my 50th birthday celebrations. The app came with me everywhere — early mornings and very late evenings at the laptop, or sat up in bed putting each change to the test while new ideas kept rolling in, from me and from the early users living with the app in their real wardrobes. Every "what if it could..." went on the list. That's how it was built: not in an office, but in the gaps of a real life, by someone who couldn't put it down.

It was a strange and wonderful season of life to build something in. In the middle of it all, I stood on the platform at Doncaster station in my best dress, setting off for a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace — an invitation I could never have imagined back at the pattern-cutting table. And yes — Closet Remix dressed me for it. I remixed the outfit in the app from pieces I already owned: dress, coat, heels, bag, even the nail polish. A 98% style match, for the Palace, without buying a single thing. If I needed proof the app worked, that was it. Days like that reminded me why the long nights were worth it.

I've funded this myself. And I haven't built it alone — I've had mentorship and support from local people and organisations, and testing and feedback from Doncaster UTC and Sheffield Hallam University that genuinely helped shape the direction of the app. I've been genuinely humbled by how much people are willing to help each other out. Even when I didn't have money to invest in their services, people went above and beyond — and they still are. I'm incredibly grateful for every one of them. Every conversation informed what Closet Remix became.

The people who believed first

Long before the App Store, there was TestFlight — and there was the moment I started telling people what I was building. What I'll never forget is how quickly everyone got it. Nobody needed the long explanation. They understood the vision, saw how useful it could be and the impact it could have, and asked when they could try it.

My family and friends didn't just cheer from the sidelines. They put the app properly to the test — their own wardrobes, their own mornings, their honest opinions. That testing made the app better, and their belief kept me going.

Then it went live, and the first reviews started coming in — some from the people who've been with me since the beginning, and some from people I've never met.

Ten ratings, five stars, and I have read every one more times than I will ever admit.

Free for everyone — and where the money goes

Two things matter to me about how this app exists in the world.

The free version is for everyone. Dressing well and caring about the planet should not have a price tag. If you never pay me a penny, I'm still glad you're here.

And when people do subscribe, that money is reinvested into Fashion Fusion CIC — into the workshops, the community, the young people in Doncaster learning that fashion can be a door that opens rather than one that's closed to them. Your subscription doesn't just fund an app. It funds a room full of people making things together.

Style smarter. Own less. Use what you have. Love more.

It fits on a screen now, but it took a working lifetime to learn.

Closet Remix is free on the App Store and Google Play. I built it in Doncaster, and I built it for you.

— Estelle

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