Just over a month ago on August 22, I found myself working with my friend Nate at his kitchen table, sketching out a wireframe for a new site. We had been bouncing ideas off one another for a few weeks over text and an idea had finally surfaced. . .

Jad: “Like maybe find a celebrity wearing a cool outfit. Copy the outfit for way cheaper.” Nate: “Focusing on men’s clothing could be a winner. Lots for women, few for men.” Jad: “Just posting an outfit everyday. And have a simple email subscription.” Nate: “That’s an awesome idea”

I immediately opened a new browser tab on my phone and quickly stumbled on a surprisingly good domain name that was available. I found a GoDaddy coupon code and bought it for $2.99 before our conversation was over.

Jad: “How about famousfashion.com” Nate: “That’s available!?!” Jad: “For $45,000, lol.” Jad: “Famous Outfits? It’s available. I’m buying it.”

We both agreed this wouldn’t be another one of those domain names that would lie dormant waiting for the “next great idea” to be developed on it. So, we met up a few days later and began brainstorming. What happened next was far beyond what we ever could have imagined.

If You Build It, They Will Come

My friend, Nate and I, are both self-taught designers and developers. We worked together in the past creating some really neat stuff. Since we had both moved on to different jobs, we were eager to collaborate again. After spending countless hours meticulously creating content for others, we wanted to build something to call our own.

Our idea was pretty simple — create a site that would show guys how and where they could affordably get the same look as popular celebrities. A well-designed, fun, and informative site that would have new content everyday. We found there were tons of sites like this for women, but very few for men. Even fewer that offered affordable clothing options. And none that weren’t overrun with ads. So, that’s what we set out to create.

Forgive me for the horrible sketch. That was done in like 2 minutes.

It didn’t take very long to come up with a game plan for the new site. Our goal was to build and launch in less than a week. That night around the kitchen table, we completed a rough wireframe. The following day, a mockup of the site was completed, and over the course of the next three days, I coded a custom WordPress theme. We created the site responsively with a mobile first approach.

V.1 of the website on an iPhone 6. Thanks to https://dribbble.com/cobe for the iPhone photo.

We knew the UX had to be equally as good on a mobile device as it would be on a desktop, including the image maps, galleries, and navigation. We took the same approach in designing our daily email too. A large portion of our users would be viewing the Daily Outfit email on a phone, and the email had to look great no matter what device it was viewed on.