How Outfit Formula picks matches

1. Organic suggestions

When you upload a piece, an AI model (Cloudflare Workers AI) describes it: type, colours, material, pattern, mood, season and formality. A second step builds three looks (Off duty, Office, Evening) with one suggestion per category, from top to shoes, bag and jewellery. Within each category carousel, options appear in this order:

Your own piece (if it belongs to that category).
The suggestions in look order: Off duty, Office, Evening (duplicates merged).

The main parameters are, in order of weight: category (the piece must belong to that part of the outfit), colour harmony with your piece, style and occasion of the look, and your styling choice (womenswear, menswear or unisex). Nobody pays for organic suggestions. "Shop this" opens a search at Zalando Belgium; we earn nothing from it today (see our affiliate disclosure).

2. Sponsored options

Shops can pay to have their products considered for one extra option in a carousel (see Partner with us). Paying never pushes out an organic suggestion and never puts a product first. One honest difference: in a category where a sponsored option is shown, the organic options in that category are still shown (with their photo, name and colour), but without our generic Shop this search link to another webshop. In every other category those links stay. A sponsored product is eligible only if it passes all of these checks, which are the same checks every organic option meets:

Category: the same category as the carousel (e.g. Shoes).
Colour: the same or a neighbouring colour family as the stylist's suggestions for that category (e.g. cognac next to camel and tan).
Style: made for at least one of the looks in your result (off duty, office or evening).
Styling choice: womenswear, menswear or unisex, matching your choice.

Then we apply limits: a carousel needs at least three organic options before one sponsored option may join, so at most 1 in 4 options is sponsored; at most one per category; at most one product per shop in a result.

Which eligible product fills the spot rotates at random, weighted by the shop's plan (Brand ×3, Boutique ×2, Starter and pay-per-click ×1) and slightly favouring an exact colour match. This is the only way payment affects ranking, and it only applies among products that already fit.

3. How ads are labelled

Every sponsored option says Sponsored · by [shop] on the card and has a Why am I seeing this? note naming who paid for it and why it was shown (category, colour and look). The shop named on the label is the advertiser and the payer. Links to sponsored products are marked rel="sponsored". On our preview site you may see clearly marked test ads from fake demo shops.

4. No profiling, minimal counting

Sponsored options are chosen only from the outfit generated for this one upload. We don't use your account, location, history or any personal profile, and we don't use ad cookies. To report to shops we count a view (card at least half on screen) and a click, once per visitor, product and day, using an anonymous code made from the date and a scrambled version of your connection details that changes every day and can't be turned back into your IP address. Obvious bots and link prefetches are filtered out. See the privacy policy.

5. Editorial independence

Our trend articles and news are written independently. Shops can't pay to appear in them; a paid article would be labelled Sponsored at the top. Elise, our AI-generated muse, only appears in paid content with a "Paid partnership" label.

6. Questions or a bad match?

Tell us at [email protected]. We review reports about sponsored products and remove ones that break these rules. Wardrobe Compass is run by BDB BV, Markt 52, 9900 Eeklo, Belgium (BE 0670.855.463).