This past week, we released our very first app, Color Genie. With the support of our fans, it managed to become the #1 Lifestyle app in 78+ countries! For those out of the loop, Color Genie is a guide to mixing color combinations for classic dress. At this stage, we hope everyone’s had a chance to use the app and make some great oufits. We’ve received some fantastic feedback from customers, and we’re incredibly glad to hear people are enjoying it. The future is bright for Color Genie – but let’s take a step back first and briefly explore how the concept became reality.
Why did we decide to make Color Genie in the first place? Well, it’s actually quite simple. An app like this didn’t really exist, and the market was asking for it. We spend a lot of our time engaging with the community and we heard the cries. We lost count of how many men said they struggled to find the right color combinations for their outfits and knew we had to do something about it. You can trough through the various app stores and find run-of-the-mill color apps and wardrobe builders all over the place but for us it was incredibly important to have a curated guide that focused primarily on classic menswear. Of course, using tailoring as a visual base was a no-brainer. Once we knew this had to be done, we started brainstorming the concept. Our COO and Digital Lead, Suresh, brushed off his coding skills and made up the very first working draft of Color Genie.
Once we had the concept and flow down, it was time to build in the combinations. The recommendations for Color Genie were completely ‘made by hand’, by myself and our Head of Design, Hashim. Each color, garment, and overall combination was added one-by-one based on our own recommendations. Each combination intends to reflect the overall style philosophy of AskOkey. Combining clothes is all about tones – understand that each color you wear is attached to the groups of neutral, warm, or cool tones. You must respect the overall tone of the outfit for it to work, though that does not mean you cannot experiment with contrasting or even loud colors. Menswear does not need to be boring; it does not need to be navy, nor grey, and that’s precisely what Color Genie wants men to do. It calls you to experiment and explore beyond your comfort zone, reaching your full potential in classic dress.
I’ll save you from the boring details of the raw data entry behind these combinations, but it was very important to us that Color Genie offered a curated selection of combinations. There is little value in an app that simply allows you to pick any color you want, for anything. We wanted to offer our recommendations – what we know will look great on every man. That is the essence of Color Genie.
The app is still fresh, but that doesn’t stop us from looking forward! We’ve started planning the next major content updates, informed by your feedback in our DMs and comments. If you’ve enjoyed Color Genie so far, please consider supporting us by leaving a 5-star review on either the App Store or Google Play Store. If you’re one of the few who hasn’t given it a go, please visit our page here to download!