Seattle-based online clothing rental company Armoire is leaning into the AI in fashion with a new feature called “Outfit Inspiration” that allows customers to create desired looks in an instant from dozens of available style and size choices.
Ambika Singh, CEO and founder of the 10-year-old startup, said she hadn’t seen anything from retail and fashion competitors that looks quite like it and enables such “builder” interactivity. The company was inspired by old paper dolls, where pants, shirts, jackets and other items can be moved around. In this case, clicking on images creates instant digital paper dolls.
“It is fun, but it’s also useful,” Singh said of the feature, which shows up for now when a member is logged in.
The tech relies on a series of pre-made outfits, suitable for a variety of occasions, created by Armoire’s stylists and head buyer.
“If you click into one of them, you can see all of the backup options, and these are actually all AI generated with visual similarity,” said Morgan Cundiff, who recently joined Armoire as head of product and machine learning.
AI makes it possible to track a huge amount of inventory across a range of styles while knowing if those items make sense for the given outfit — and if the right sizes are currently available for rent.
“AI has really allowed us to unlock and dynamically be grabbing those items [in real time], so we know exactly what’s available when we’re grabbing them for you,” Cundiff said. “Without the AI assist, creating this number of permutations felt impossible.”
Armoire, which Singh has previously referred to as “a very human-powered business,” made its first big AI splash last November with the launch of a virtual stylist to help clothing renters find the perfect items.
Outfit Inspiration builds on that use of AI while adhering to Armoire’s core principle of personalization. And it will continue to grow beyond the launch offering of outfits, as different customers will see different main outfits as well as the many clickable options inside each.
“It’s not AI for AI’s sake,” Singh said. “It’s some old problem that you have been trying to solve, that you now have an opportunity to actually go get.”
Armoire, which works out of a 60,000-square-foot warehouse space in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood, employs 100 people.
The startup has raised $12 million from investors, including a $3.5 million round in 2021 that included backing from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani and others. Armoire reached break-even near the end of 2025, a first for the business.
The company is ranked No. 40 on the GeekWire 200 index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups and won Workplace of the Year last April at the annual GeekWire Awards.
