Test-drive: style iPhone apps

I’m usually pretty sedentary about getting new apps for my iPhone; I’ll forget about it for a couple of months at a time, then be totally astonished at the amount of apps I’d never heard of that are instant “How did I live without this?” classics (having the AP Stylebook be searchable offline is the greatest thing in the world, as is having the answer to every “What the hell is that song, again?” question).

I realized, though, that all my apps were either Sudoku or completely utilitarian, and that I hadn’t even searched through the fashion/style genre. And so, I give you six style-related iPhone applications I tried out, which ranged from the stupid to the seriously useful, so you don’t have to:

APP: iStylist Makeover

COST: $.99

THE GIST: You either take a photo of yourself or use one already on your iPhone, crop your head into a neck-and-body silhouette, and then plop various celebrity hairstyles, hats, glasses and blush colors onto yourself to see how you’d look as Bai Ling or a mourner at the Michael Jackson funeral.

WHAT COULD USE A 2.0: Oh god, this is really terrible. They don’t even make sure the hairstyles they supply fit the weird face shape you have to try to cram yourself into; a bunch of them are clearly from photos in which the celebrity was turned slightly to the side. It appears you can download even more hairstyles in upgrade packs, but good god, I’m already pretty done with this.

ACTUALLY USEFUL?: No, maybe if you’re at a bar

OVERALL: Why is the worst one the only one that’s not free?

Apps that were actually useful, after the jump…

APP: Stylish Girl

COST: Free

THE GIST: Catalog all your clothes so you know what you have and what will match what when you go shopping for new additions to your wardrobe. This very much appeals to the insane part of me that loves obsessing over lists, but let me be clear: that is not healthy.

WHAT COULD USE A 2.0: You can’t recrop photos, you have to just take a new one, which is annoying. If you forget to hit “To My Closet” after you’re done classifying , the photo you took is gone forever once you take another one. Coats, shirts and dresses shouldn’t all be one category, and if you’re only giving three “Style” options to classify things into, “Yoga” sure as hell better not be taking up valuable space.I’d be more pleased if you could add custom categories.

ACTUALLY USEFUL?: For people who have so many clothes they can’t remember what-all is in their closet, people who like to be really organized about lending/borrowing clothes, the obsessive-compulsive.

OVERALL: I was already bored with taking pictures of my clothes after doing the twelve things I chose so I wouldn’t have blank spots in the screenshot on the right.

APP: Benjamin Moore ColorCapture

COST: Free

THE GIST: You take a picture with your iPhone’s camera, and then can find out the Benjamin Moore paint color that corresponds to any point on the picture by touching that point with your finger.

WHAT COULD USE A 2.0: The iPhone camera’s not all that great, so the match between the color you see with your eyes and the paint chip the app comes up with is probably not going to be that close a match.

ACTUALLY USEFUL: If you need to paint your walls the exact color of your boyfriend’s hand, Joey Vento’s minivan or the Broad Street Line. Otherwise maybe it’s just fun to find the color in a picture that’s the perfect one for the situation (like the middle one above).

OVERALL: ¡Si, es muy caliente!

APP: Style.com

COST: Free

THE GIST: This one is really pretty great if you like to just look at fashion. They have every look from just about every major designer runway show going back to 2000, with links to reviews of the collections. There’s also a section of videos that load very quickly indeed if you’re hooked up to wireless.

WHAT COULD USE A 2.0: Not too much, honestly.

ACTUALLY USEFUL: If you like runway fashion, this is a pretty awesome timewaster

OVERALL: I’m keeping it!

APP: ShopStyle mobile

COST: Free

THE GIST: A very visual mobile interface for ShopStyle, which I’ve always thought as fashion fantasy football. You can scroll by a lot of things quickly and mark favorites to remember. You can also search which things are on sale or a specific price range, and the large-size image has the price floating right on it. It has its own little built-in browser that takes you to the store’s site when you click “Buy” instead of taking you to Safari, which is nice.

WHAT COULD USE A 2.0: The curation of the stuff that shows up is great, but it’s a little less intuitive to search for specific colors, seasons or fits. The small size of the thumbnails also can make details hard to see.

ACTUALLY USEFUL?: If you like to look at what’s actually for sale rather than what’s on the runway.

OVERALL: Meh, but ShopStyle wasn’t really my thing to begin with. If you’re near wireless and like window shopping, this is right up your alley.

APP: Thread

COST: Free

THE GIST: Extremely simple and extremely fast way to browse the most recent Threadless desgins. You scroll left and right with the arrows, the $ takes you to the t-shirt’s page in Safari and the camera icon merely informs you how to take an iPhone screenshot.

WHAT COULD USE A 2.0: It certainly does what it does, no pretensions, but I could see the extremely simplicity getting boring after the first time or so.

ACTUALLY USEFUL?: If you get bored and are still on the slow-ass Edge network like me

OVERALL: Nice the first time, don’t see it being something I use a lot.