The Internet Made me a Dress

When I saw the Instagram ad appear in my feed, I stopped in my tracks. It was love at first sight. This dress was everything I’d ever wanted: high neck, midi length, bold geometrical patterns, a well-defined waist, wide sleeves and my favourite colour combination. I hit ‘Buy’ within seconds, terrified that some other woman would have spotted it and be equally enamoured (and trigger happy with the Paypal button). It cost me €26.73, an odd number and one which implied fast fashion, non-organic materials and even possibly child labour.

But still, though. It looked like it would be the Best Dress Ever, right. I was powerless to resist. It was the Dress of Dreams. If you’d mashed up every Pinterest board and magazine cutting that I possess and then chucked them together, you would have probably ended up with a design that closely resembled this. It was, in short, perfect.

So it was disappointing when the slightly mangled English of the confirmation email informed me that the Dress of Dreams would take up to six weeks to arrive on my doorstep. This was annoying – I had it in mind for a late spring party. World events then overtook even the supreme excitement of the finding the Best Dress and for the while, I mostly wore joggers. The fancy party was cancelled. And I’d more or less forgotten about it until a grey plastic parcel came from China in late June.

The material isn’t great and the finish – the scrappy hem and the wobbly neckline – are not ideal. But, oh it’s still a great dress. It’s flattering and floaty and light and can be worn to any event; state-sanctioned exercise, socially-distant socialising, lounging at home, in bed, going to the shops… I’ve never had so many compliments in my life. ‘Where on earth did you find that dress?’ people exclaim in wonder. ‘It’s SO you.’ It so is.

One friend pushed me for a source. Are there other colourways available? Mine is pink and red, she’d love a black and white version. I scrolled back … and back… and back through Instagram but couldn’t find the ad or the site. Some Sherlock-worthy sleuthing (Ok, my Paypal receipt) eventually led me to a Chinese clothing manufacturer. I forwarded the link to my friend but no luck. ‘They’re a ghost store,’ she told me in disappointment.

Twirling in my Best Dress – the cheap fabric withstands almost daily washing – I told her that I was very much not clad in a phantasmagorical ectoplasm but rather a very flattering and delightful garment. ‘

That means that they don’t stock any clothes, they just make it on demand based on your browsing and clicking data.’

I stopped in my tracks. Wait, Instagram just designed me a dress?

Turns out that’s exactly what happened. Whatever you click, like and stare at informs the pipeline of Insta feeds and ads that appear before your eyes. So if you, just for example, like a lot of pink and red dresses / high-necked prairie dresses / waisted / billowing sleeves dresses… then a computer somewhere in China digests all that and spits it out as an image of a mock-up dress and wafts it under your hungry fingers. If you liked all of those, you’ll probably like this. If you don’t take the bait, the dress that never was disappears into the data nothingness. If you do, it will cost you €26.73 and arrive within six weeks.

This is the dress that mirrors my taste exactly. It’s a polystyrene incarnation of the ultimate dress, according to me, myself and I. It is flattering and goes with so many other things in my wardrobe. You could say that I designed it myself, and it’s certainly unique. Not even I could replicate the exact combination of clicking and keystrokes and likes that created my algorithm-generated dress.

More recently, I’ve been offered strange woollen trousers that ‘flatter the tired skin’ and are ‘ideal for holidays within 100 km of home’. I suspect that a combination of searches for a new moisturiser, ideal Scandi pullover and realistic getaways has resulted in this less successful proposition. Be careful what you click for.

Would I feel smugger or happier if my dream dress had been unearthed in a charity shop or Brown Thomas bargain rail rather than magicked up by some AI bot several continents away? I’d like to say yes, it’s all about the human touch and personal interaction and the joy of finding something that you really like in the real world. But then again, could anything be better than this dress? Surely it’s the people that inhabit clothes that really bring them to life. That party will happen again and I’ve finally got the perfect dress to wear. Even if we’re on our own for Christmas, I’ve got my outfit for the day sorted. Honestly, it’s just so me. My only regret is that I didn’t buy two.

Jennifer Coyle, October 2020.

Have you ever bought anything this way? We’d love to hear your story in the comments below…