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You don’t hear Ireland being mentioned in the fashion pages of Vogue, Elle, Cosmo and Grazia too often but that’s exactly what’s happening thanks to a new Irish app called Style-Eyes.

Created by three researchers from Dublin City University, when the app had fashion leaders taking an interest in it from the get-go, Mark Hughes, Bobby Pringle and Oisin Mac Fearaí must have known they were on to something good.

Self-dubbed the Shazam for fashion, Style-Eyes combines high-end technology with a very simple fashion dilemma faced by many on a regular basis—‘How can I find out where they bought that without having to ask?’

The Style-Eyes creators: Oisin Mac Fearaí, Dr Mark Hughes and Bobby Pringle

In fact the idea for the app came about when Mark Hughes’ girlfriend saw a coat on a stranger and searched for it in the shops and online for weeks. Soon he and the rest of the team were spending hours trying to teach a computer how to tell the difference between a dress and, let’s say, a car or a building. When they finally perfected the process, Style-Eyes was born. Now you can take a photo of someone wearing your item of desire and let the app do the rest of the work for you—simple.

The app’s slogan gives a nod to the simplicity of the process for the user. “Snap it. Find it. Buy it.” Take a picture, define it and send it to the app’s grey matter where technology does the rest of the work for you. The hardest part is probably trying to take a photo of a stranger on the street without looking like a stalker.

Much like its sibling Shazam, Style-Eyes uses recognition technology—image recognition instead of audio recognition in former’s case—so you simply take a picture or use an existing picture on your phone and the app will scour its database to identify the product, telling you where you can purchase it. If the app can't match the exact item it suggests similar products.

So does it work? The short answer is yes. In my experience, although it never gave me an exact match for the items I searched for, it did offer me some near identical options.

One shortfall is that there are currently only four main search categories to choose from: dresses, shoes, skirts and handbags. It is a little disappointing that tops, trousers and jackets aren’t in the mix but thankfully that seems to be in the not-too-distant future for the app’s development. “We'll be adding new categories of products over the next few weeks along with several new improvements to the core technology,” says Hughes.

The process from search to purchase is pretty quick and seamless. If you find an item you want to purchase you can either save it for later (or until you get paid) or you can buy it there and then, with the app directing you to the retailer’s mobile site where you make the transaction.

The simplicity of the process

The Style-Eyes app has 45,000 downloads since its official launch in mid-December last year. So what has been the key to its success so far? It’s down to a couple of factors. They believe their recognition technology is superior to most. Their software can analyse an image and identify characteristics like the shape, size, pattern or design of a piece of clothing. Achieving this type of ‘machine learning’ is no mean feat.

Tellingly, the second reason behind its success is the acceptance and buy-in from fashion houses and retailers. This was always going to be paramount to the app’s shelf life. Hughes points out that those in the fashion business can see the potential of having what is basically a hand-held scanner with users actively searching for and purchasing products.

The concept is certainly on trend, with 900 retailers on board—encompassing over 5,000 brands—clothes are in the Style-Eyes database just waiting to be found and bought by potential customers. Hughes knows that these are their two main points of difference: “Our technology is more precise by a significant degree and we have far more partnerships/retailers—thus, more choice for shoppers.”

So how do you make a good thing even better? Hughes says their plans for the future include “rolling the app out in the US in the next few months and adding new brands/retailers from different countries.” They also hope to include some additional features “such as social integration, sales tracking, etc...” However, Hughes knows the priceless value of user feedback and promises, “We are always listening to what our customers have to say and we are prioritising what we do next based on it.”

Already winners of multiple awards, including Enterprise Ireland One to Watch Award and Retail Startup of the Year Award in 2013, Style-Eyes continues to receive accolades and acknowledgement for their groundbreaking image recognition technology. If the app is as successful in the US as it is on this side of the Atlantic, then whatever the future holds for this Dublin trio, it’s most definitely (and fashionably) bright.

Style-Eyes is available to download for free at the iOS and Android.

This article originally appeared in Newstalk Magazine for iPad in February, for more details go here.