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What once felt like a futuristic fashion fantasy in the 1995 film Clueless is now reality through Whering, the world's largest social wardrobe app. Backed by Google and eBay, the platform helps more than 10 million users organize, style, and maximize the value of their wardrobes. Whering President Tracy Guarino discusses closet organization, sustainable fashion habits, and the future of fashion technology. From outfit planning to reducing unnecessary purchases, here's how technology can help you get more from your wardrobe.
Nashville Lifestyles: For readers who haven't discovered Whering yet, how would you describe the app in one sentence?
Tracy Guarino: Inspired by the interactive closet in the 1995 film Clueless, Whering is the world’s largest social wardrobe app backed by Google and eBay, helping over 10 million users see, organize, style and get more value from their wardrobe.My firm, Guarino Advisors, who supports leaders in high trust environments facing moments of complexity, including rapid growth, platform evolution, governance expansion and strategic transition, invested in Whering in 2022 due to our specialized conviction of tech operating experience. I then became President of the company.
NL: What's the biggest benefit users experience after digitizing their wardrobes?
TG: People start wearing more of what they already own. In our study of 10,000 users, 84% said they wear their clothes more often after digitizing their wardrobe, and 70% said they've reduced fast fashion purchases since using the app. Most people have never had clear visibility and organization into their own belongings. Once they do, conscious-driven behavior follows. This is valuable evidence for the fashion industry as a whole, as it approaches sustainability practices.
NL: How does Whering help people get more value from the clothes they already own, and how does it help users find their sense of style?
TG: With your wardrobe at your fingertips, Whering displays a collection of what's worn most and what's ignored, helping users find their style, make informed decisions about what to invest in, and what to pass on to circular fashion.
NL: Are you noticing any clothing trends?
TG: The biggest trend we're seeing isn't a stylistic one, it's a behavioral one. Whering’s technology has helped prove that wardrobe visibility promotes sustainability. This is the type of behaviour already defining new business standards in fashion. The European Union is taking the lead in writing those standards into law, setting the guidelines that will improve fashion business. It's a wake-up call for us Americans who will be next to support our businesses at home, as they navigate changes in technology. Guarino Advisors is already bridging that conversation, supporting leadership across borders.
NL: How can technology help reduce impulse purchases?
TG: Transparency is the lever, and it's a discipline fashion can borrow directly from other high-trust industries. Financial services didn't reduce high-risk consumer decisions through control at the personal level, it mandated disclosure at the point of the transaction. Fashion needs its equivalent: visibility into what you already own before you buy, and ideally visibility into an item's actual footprint, water used, emissions produced, at the point of purchase, not buried in a sustainability report nobody reads. That's the same disclosure at the point-of-decision-principle that governs regulated industries, applied to a shopping cart.
NL: What does a well-optimized wardrobe look like in 2026?
TG: It's not a minimalist capsule for its own sake, it's a wardrobe with a high wear-rate across the board, nothing bought and forgotten within a season. It's built from more-intentional wardrobe items that combine into many looks. It also weaves into resale and circularity. Being in control of your wardrobe means optimizing value from it, whether by re-selling or actually investing in worthwhile pieces that can serve as assets: a well-optimized wardrobe in 2026 is a documented one. As Digital Product Passport requirements and resale verification standards move from proposal to deadline, provenance and afterlife data on what you own stop being a nice-to-have and become the baseline, the same way audit trails became baseline in finance. That regulatory shift is coming whether the industry is ready or not, and it's a large part of why I do the work I do. Whering is the perfect database to keep track of product ID and its lifetime details.
NL: How does Whering make packing for vacations and multi-event trips easier?
TG: With your whole wardrobe digitized, you're not packing from memory or overpacking "just in case." You can plan outfits against the actual events on your itinerary in advance, see how few pieces mix into multiple looks. New funding from Google’s AI Futures Fund will help insert AI into this process by helping you plan according to the weather or other considerations for the place you are visiting.
NL: How is technology changing the way consumers interact with fashion? How can technology help people make more intentional fashion decisions?
TG: Fashion is becoming a high-risk sector and most of the industry doesn't fully realize it yet. AI now sits between the shopper and the retailer at nearly every touchpoint, recommending, filtering, increasingly transacting on a consumer's behalf, in what's really agentic, non-linear commerce rather than the direct retailer-to-shopper relationship the industry was built around. That disintermediation raises the exact questions I spent my earlier career answering in defense and financial technology: who is accountable when something goes wrong, how do you attribute value and intent when a browser extension or resale platform sits in the middle of a transaction, and how do you build verification and enforcement into the system itself rather than bolt it on after a scandal. Fashion has largely lacked the data governance and visibility to answer those questions, upstream and down. That's the gap Guarino Advisors works in, bringing the same verification, liability-protection and enforcement discipline that made financial technology secure to an industry that's now facing its own version of that reckoning, from EU AI Act provisions on intended use, to Digital Product Passport and resale verification requirements. For consumers, the same principle scales down: they will soon begin to demand increased security when engaging with fashion and the industry must prepare to abide by their standards. My work in fashion is to support the creative led industry while navigating upcoming sustainability and authentication and verification regulations.
NL: If readers take away one lesson about maximizing their wardrobes, what would you want it to be?
TG: You almost certainly own more outfit combinations than you think you do. The next great look is rarely the next purchase, it's already hanging in your closet, waiting to be seen.
NL: What's next for Whering that users should be excited about?
TG: Google’s AI Futures Fund will help deliver intelligent outfit suggestions that adapt to a user’s mood, the weather, or an occasion. eBay will support the technical foundations that keep fashion in rotation longer. Whering represents what fashion commerce will ultimately be built on and I am pleased to see Google and eBay join us on this journey.