Launched last month, LOT is a clothing subscription service that sends you a monthly package of fashion and grooming products. For $49 a month, it promises a selection of all-black wardrobe staples—socks, tees, underwear, pants, shoes, a sweatshirt, and so forth. For an extra $50 you’ll receive an additional “self-care product” or accessory—like a black toothbrush, a hair bleach kit, or, um, a tattoo gun—per month. The site’s visuals were so stark that it had people wondering if it was a real company or a design-nerd prank, maybe even an alternate reality game. While monthly clothing and grooming packages sounds familiar to Trunk Club and Birchbox subscribers, that’s about all LOT has in common with those mainstream services. Other brands curate boxes of approachable things you need, and plenty you didn’t realize you needed. They’re essentially Amazon Prime meets pushy girlfriend: Silicon Valley’s way of making dressing and grooming easy for shop-a-phobic men. (Do those still exist?)

But not LOT.

LOT’s bare-bones assortment of all-black wardrobe staples takes the concept of techno-simplicity to it’s logical conclusion. Think: Goth Steve Jobs. That’s what the basic plan gets you: an unbranded uniform replenished at a reasonable rate every month. But the accessories reserved for advanced subscribers range from standard to hardcore. LOT seems to promise something way outside convenience—something more like a new lifestyle.

Despite the internet debate, LOT is very real, the latest project of Vadik Marmeladov. “It’s real, of course,” said Marmeladov. “Why don’t people want to believe it is real? This is the realest thing that should exist.” Marmeladov was in Shenzhen, China when I called. He splits his time between the manufacturing city and LA, moving between the two offices of Ruki, the hardware incubator he founded last year. Marmeladov grew up in Russia and was involved in Moscow’s burgeoning fashion and publishing scene “a long time ago.” He went on to start the design firm Lapka in 2012, which was known for transforming environmental sensors into stylish, wearable accessories. Airbnb purchased Lapka in 2015 for an undisclosed sum, and Marmeladov ran their in-house concept design team until leaving late last year.

LOT sweatshirt LOT pants LOT jacket

Given Marmeladov’s industrial design background, he has lofty goals for LOT that go beyond designing the perfect black uniform—and that should end the message board speculation. “It’s a very limited line of clothing and accessories, so we’ll be able to update it every month; we can start with simple stuff and eventually make it better,” says Marmeladov. “The idea is that eventually every product will grow according to you.” Plenty of subscription services tailor their selections to your style preferences, but to hear Marmeladov tell it, the goal is more expansive: To use individual data and feedback to make each product highly personalized. “Not in terms of color,” Marmeladov says, “but in terms of how you use it.” (If black’s not for you, you’re out of luck.) Though circumspect in revealing too many details, Marmeladov—in a rare moment of Silicon Valley-ness—suggests this will be accomplished by perfecting the supply chain, comparing LOT to the one thing besides clothes we use every day. “The iPhone is not about the phone, it’s about the back end,” says Marmeladov. “What we see in fashion now is just the same shit they were doing hundreds of years. Fashion thinks if they start to use technology, it won’t be as beautiful or as deep or as luxury. Actually it will be so much better, so much more luxury, so much more beautiful.” But before all that can happen, of course, people need to start using it.