“You know, I have to say that starting your own business is probably the scariest thing you will ever do.” -Anisha Mukherjee, co-founder of Dress For The Day
As a fashion blogger, it is my duty to inform all of you of the coolest and most innovative new creations that are out there in the fashion and beauty industry. With that being said, let me introduce you to Dress For The Day. DFTD is, as they call it, “the ultimate fashion calculator” for your wardrobe. Most women, like me, like to pre-plan their outfits and know exactly what they are wearing to any occasion they are attending. Any occasion, from baby showers, birthday parties, black tie events, cocktail parties, girls night out, holidays etc., we all dread the day when we actually have to go out and put together an outfit from scratch. Where do you even begin? Well that is where Dress For The Day comes in! It is a one-stop shop app where you input the occasion you are going to, your personal style and what the weather will be like where you are going and voila! You are then given options among options of outfits worn by every day women in the streets to choose from and you can shop right from the picture! I think it is such a fabulous concept and guess what? The app was created by two young women who just understood the need for women who don’t know where to begin building their outfits and wardrobe! Don’t you just love the entrepreneurial woman? I know I do!
Shradha and Anisha, co-founders of Dress For The Day.
I sat down with Anisha Mukherjee, co-founder of Dress For The Day at her gorgeous apartment in Midtown Manhattan to talk more about the app!
Sherly Tavarez: What is Dress For The Day?
Anisha Mukherjee: DFTD is every girls dream, it’s basically a fashion calculator that helps women get dressed for each day based on personal style, occasion, weather and budget. So it’s a one stop shop to figure out what to wear, for either every day or for upcoming occasions. It’s very simple 1+1=2, you pick your personal style and then you’ll get a bunch of street style looks based on your selections and also based on your weather. The street style looks all come from the users themselves, so our philosophy is the everyday woman inspires the everyday woman. Let’s make fashion approachable, attainable and not intimidating. (I love this!)
Anisha and Shradha, co-founders of Dress For The Day.
ST: Who are the founders?
AM: The founders are myself Anisha and my business partner Shradha, who couldn’t be with us today because she just welcomed a beautiful baby girl! The two of us have known each other for about 10 years and we were just out to dinner one day 3 years ago catching up on life and figuring out all the different weddings, interviews, bridal showers and trips that we had going on and we were sort of just frustrated that there was no easy tool, you know we were sick of going on the style boards and these really time consuming web sites to put together outfits and inspirations and we kind of just wanted an easy one-stop shop so we thought “why not create this ourselves?” So we did and we tested it out. We saw that our friends needed it, their friends needed it so we wireframed it, we linked up with a tech team and we launched the website 2 years ago and we launched the app last week! We have some exciting partnerships coming out this summer and we’re launching men’s in the fall which is going to be really exciting! I had more of the legal business background, I went to law school and I practiced in the music industry for entertainment law for about 3 years. Shradha worked in the fashion industry, she went to Parsons and then she worked at Luxottica for about 4 years after graduating. So we’ve both been in the city and submerged to the street style aspect. We get our inspiration from women walking out in the street and we wanted to embody that in Dress For The Day as much as we could! It’s just the two of us on the team, two women trying to make it!
ST: Being two female entrepreneurs, how do you feel you are perceived in the industry?
AM: You know, I have to say that starting your own business is probably the scariest thing you will ever do. We both had full time careers in the corporate world prior to starting DFTD and quitting our jobs and doing DFTD full time which we did actually about a year ago was the scariest decision but the best decision that we’ve ever made. It was scary because females in the startup arena, in the tech arena and then in the fashion arena, it sort of felt like we had all forces working against each other from sort of like a gender perspective, that was the perception. Once we stepped out there, the start up community is really welcoming, especially being a minority woman, it’s difficult to gauge how others will perceive you and they think oh you’re a girl in fashion you know its very surface. When you start your own business you have to know every single facet of that business, we have to know the tech, the fashion, the social media, the legal. It’s really all about being confident and showing everyone that you have the ambition and determination that everyone else around you has! We don’t have 20 years of experience in the business but we are learning something new everyday!
ST: What is the price point at DFTD?
AM: Great question! We have all price points. For Shradha and myself we will splurge sometimes but we’ll totally be budget other times and I think that’s the beauty of fashion. Take for example all of the different collaborations, BALMAIN for H&M. It’s juxtaposing the high-end designer with the sort of fast fashion and we’re sort of seeing that come to flourish more and more as the years go on in fashion so for our site, you can shop at K-mart and Target, you can shop at Macy’s and Club Monaco and you can shop at Bergdorf and TopShop so we really make sure that we cover the entire spectrum of price points because we want the user to be able to decide how she wants to dress and how much money she wants to spend.
ST: Where do you see DFTD in 5 years from now?
AM: We have a lot of fun tech related goals. We’re building up on our app and website, but our retail partnerships are really important to us and we have a lot of cool publication partnerships in the works as well. We definitely see men’s coming to maybe an equal playing field as women just because we’ve had so many men request DFTD from the day that we launched, men are just an confused as we are, if not more. And men are really private, they aren’t going to be texting their friends like “hey, what should I wear?”, they will do it in the privacy of their own home so why not have this easy tech app? We also have this fashion forum which is basically just like a big group chat where you can get feedback from everyone in the community on just about anything, we hope to see that grow too!
ST: What is the once piece of wardrobe that you can’t live without?
AM: I would have to say the things that I can’t live without, I call them my MC Hammer pants, I know that’s ridiculous but they are sort of like those palazzo, tapered baggy pants from H&M. They are cotton and I wear them everywhere, to the airport, I dress them up with heels and wedges at night, I wear them during the day with flats and they were only $20! They are just so versatile! I also have a great navy blazer with sort of the gold military button look from J.Crew that I got for a steal again that I wear all the time, can be dressed up with heels and white jeans or just thrown over jeans and a white t-shirt. Those are definitely my “go-to” pieces.
Shradha and Anisha, co-founders of Dress For The Day.
Anisha’s “MC Hammer” pants from H&M.
ST: Tell us an interesting fact about you that we wouldn’t know by just looking at you?
AM: Well you may know by looking at me because I am on the shorter side, but when I was in the 7th grade, I played a munchkin on The Wizard of Oz in Madison Square Garden with Roseanne Barr as the wicked witch of the west! That was my 10 minutes of fame on Broadway when I was ’bout 10 or 11 years old.
Head over to www.dressfortheday.com to start planning your next outfit! You can also download the app here! XoXo
Sherly in The City 