Walmart Now Lets You Use Your Own Photos For Virtual Clothes Fitting

Walmart has announced a “leveled up” virtual fitting room that lets customers use their own photos to virtually try on clothing, effectively letting users be their own models.

The virtual fitting room service, initially launched in March of 2022, gave users 50 different models with various body types and heights to select from to find a “close match” to their own body type and height to see how the clothing would look on that model. While this initial version provided an impressive variety of models and sizes to choose from, users still felt the service wasn’t providing a realistic enough impression of how the items would truly look on their own bodies.

That changes today as now the company lets anyone upload photos of themselves to the app and see what clothes would look like on their individual bodies.

The company’s Apparel and Private Brands EVP Denise Incandela says that the company is “continuing to make bold moves to establish Walmart as a destination for fashion” and the acquisition and implementation of the Zeekit virtual try-on platform is a huge part of that strategy.

“Its virtual fitting room can show how clothes fit in a realistic way. It doesn’t simply overlay images on your photos — when you choose an item to fit, you’ll see the parts where shadows would fall and you’ll see how the fabric would drape on your body,” she says.

“Theoretically, that means different sizes of the same item would look differently on your photo in the same way they’d fall differently on your body if you were trying them in real life. That’s made possible with the use of algorithms and machine learning models originally used to develop accurate topographic images.”

According to the company, the new virtual try-on experience is available for more than 270,000 women’s apparel items across Walmart’s available brands (including Levi’s, Avia, Scoop, and Hanes) and will continue to grow. Users of the service will be prompted to take a photo of themselves upon first use of the application when you tap the “Try It On” button.

The service suggests users stand the phone somewhere about waist height and instructs them to be sure to wear something “form-fitting,” and then move back so that their whole body is visible for the posed photograph. Once the app captures the user’s initial pose, they are then prompted to input their height at which point the app will start digitally mapping the users body, positioning and shadows in order to accurately display how each item available would fall on their figure.

The updated experience is available now on the Walmart iOS app with an update coming soon for Android and desktop users.