As long as “Saturday Night Live“‘s costume designer Jill Bream and stylist Alexis Teller have been working in the industry, the two have been inundated with messages asking for outfit advice.
Bream and Teller met while working at “SNL” and quickly became friends after sharing a vision for anyone to access styling advice, without having to know a stylist personally. This gave way to the idea of their new app Anywear, which launched Tuesday.
With 25 years of combined experience, Bream has been a costume designer at “SNL” for more than 15 years and Teller worked on the show for four seasons before she left this past February — the cofounders have worked across the commercial, television, e-commerce and celebrity styling spaces.
The idea of Anywear is simple: a messaging-based platform that pairs anyone with some of the industry’s top stylists for on-demand advice and expertise. After answering questions via a short questionnaire to guide where the stylists can help, users can then choose from its current base of 20 stylists.
The stylists have their own profile with a brief bio, timings and availability; area of expertise, whether it’s vintage style or tailoring, and their website portfolio for ease of selection. Users can choose help with brands already in their closet, help with shopping, defining or redefining their personal style, help with fit and sizing, building a capsule wardrobe and more.
Bream and Teller also tapped into their network of stylist friends and colleagues to include on the platform, including Tom Broecker, Bryan Matechen, Carolyn Brennan, Victoria Cameron and Dyshaun Burton.
“Trying to find a stylist or figure out what you want to wear is so personal and scary — we want to take all of that out of the experience,” Bream told WWD. “It doesn’t have to be; it can be fun. We want you to come back to us and keep talking to us. We’re gonna be on this journey with you and help you understand what you love, why you love it and develop your personal style without thinking you’re never going to afford something or know yourself.”
The name Anywear lends itself to the overall vision Bream and Teller have for the platform, which has been in the works for the past year — they came up with the idea at the beginning of last summer and first started working on the app last August. The two purposefully kept the idea and user experience simple to allow for consumer and market feedback, user reactions and to figure out what consumers want more from their platform — making it broad enough for everyone to use.
“It’s styling that shows up whenever you need it, anytime and anywhere. Alexis and I realized that everyone in our lives texts us for outfit help constantly — whether it’s family, parents, cousins and friends. Our stylist and costume designer friends, too — we find that everyone in our lives is texting us asking for outfits. Whether it’s a special event, a date or someone just broke up — everyone wants to look good. We realized there is this huge hole in the industry, so we built it into an app.”
Ahead of its launch, the platform currently has 500 users who helped with beta testing and a waitlist of stylists looking to lend their services to the app. The target consumer Bream and Teller is hoping to capture with this new app is Millennials — especially those currently going through a transition period.
“Everyone is so busy nowadays and the idea of a stylist can be daunting, unaffordable or inaccessible,” Teller explained. “I really want to push men to use it because most of the texts I get are from them. My guy friends are texting me about going on dates, going to a job that they just started. Maybe they have a new body, are going to a big event, just had a baby or went through a breakup. It’s the moment when people stare at the closet and feel like they have nothing to wear.”
One of the key differentiators Anywear believes it has from similar apps is on-demand styling — and its focus on having real human stylists. The messaging-based platform helps the stylists both send links and send advice to the user.
“We’re not there to come into your closet, buy you new clothes and try them on you and then return them — which is like a huge thing in styling; return what you don’t like or what doesn’t look good,” Teller continued. “We’re meant to give you simple, easy advice. We’re expert professionals — we’re not there to sell you anything or make you look a certain way.”
Bream and Teller pointed out that accessibility is not something the world of traditional styling has overcome yet — it’s always been attached to exclusivity. Quick fixes with 10-minute help messages are $25 and personalized styling messages for 30 minutes are $55.
“The goal is to have people feel like they’re really being taken care of,” Teller said. “With AI, you don’t get that human touch experience. Clothes, style and what you put on your body are so personal to you. We’re humans, we’re helping humans and we are experts in it in an era when everyone can be demoralized by an algorithm.”
Down the line, the cofounders will eventually add in affiliate links from programs like ShopMy and other equivalents. And while they’re not seeking out AI stylists to add to the mix, the two are open to the idea of AI closets or color swatches that look best on each individual, cataloguing and more, based on what resonates with the app’s users.
“We’re here to bridge the gap and bring professional styling to everyone. Styling should not be as scary as some people think it is — and having a stylist can actually be really fun and empowering,” Bream and Teller concluded.
Financial details of the app were not disclosed. Bream and Teller closed Anywears’ pre-seed round with angel investors within the private equity and finance sectors in January, with another round of funding slated for early 2027.