Check Out This Crazy Japanese Mirror That Lets You Try On Clothes

There’s a dress I’ve been coveting over at Kate Spade’s online site for months. It’s now on final sale, which would be great news, but there’s a problem. Kate Spade has two different size charts, and the dress is only available online. Having never bought a Kate Spade dress, the saleswoman in an actual Kate Spade store informed me that I’ll just have to guesstimate. But if I’m shelling out over a hundred dollars for a dress that is non-returnable, it must fit.

Enter Digital Fashion Co., a Japanese company that has created a device that will help women to determine how clothing will fit. According to our sister site, GFR, the device is called the Active Lab, the new device allows women to stand in front of a virtual mirror and use the device to basically paste clothing to her digital image. If this sounds rudimentary, it actually isn’t. As the model above shows, the virtual clothing even moves as the woman moves.

While I wouldn’t want to be the scantily clad model standing in front of a roomful of people in order to show off this device, it’s still a pretty cool idea for technology. Women love to buy things, but if there isn’t an option to try an outfit on, it’s often a no go. While the very first Active Lab does look like it's still in a test phase, I can imagine a world where I can pop into a Kate Spade store and try on a dress, whether or not the store actually keeps that dress in stock. I’d imagine it’s not quite as satisfying as actually feeling the fabric and the fit, though.

Someday, women are going to be able to try on famous dresses and pre-release collections and even outfits in manatee grey whether the store has them in stock or not. Now that's progress.