The Cools: A Tumblr and The Fancy hybrid for fashion junkies

A new fashion start-up called The Cools has launched today, with backing from some top names in fashion, funding from MTV founder Bob Pittman and a slick, minimal website that’s guaranteed to appeal to style junkies.

We hate saying a new platform is a bit like this and this, or a mashup of that one and that one, but if we had to describe The Cools we’d have to say it’s a mix of Tumblr and The Fancy, because you can collect together “cool” images, add your own and even go on to buy them. The great thing about The Cools is that users have a LOT of freedom, they can show off their own designs or create their own style blog. You don’t have to be an industry insider to get started either, even us regular, ugly, non-fashiony types can pretend we know a thing or two about style.

It doesn’t just have to be about fashion either (although that’s what the team behind The Cools is rightly focusing on), there are sections for photography, design and even TECH that might prove to be popular as the site gains momentum.

When you first sign up to The Cools you’re asked a series of different questions about your ideal home, what you flat is like and what kind of clothes you wear. You’re then asked to pick five images that you think are “cool”, which all combine together to make a kind of taste profile that the site will use to fire ideas at you later down the line.

There are four main sections of The Cools, Feed, Shop, Sell and Me. Feed is a continuous, uh… feed of all the content other users are adding right now, which you can browse through, mark as “cool”, add comments to or re-blog on your profile. Shop feeds you all of the content that’s available to buy and the only difference is that when you hover over the images you can choose to click “cool” or “buy”. Sell takes you to a form where you can fill in your details in order to sell your items and finally Me takes you to your personal feed with the content you “cool”, a Tumblr-esque status bar that allows you to update and share content and plenty more customisable features.

If you’re already a die-hard Tumblr, The Fancy, WIWT or Pinterest fan and follow a lot of other fashion-obsessed users then you might not find much use for The Cools right now, but if you’re into style and like trying out new platforms that could one day be kind of a big deal, then sign up to The Cools and start “cool”-ing (we wonder if that will catch on?) a lot of lovely content that pleases your eyes right now.

We get that the fashion industry as a whole is a little pretentious, glitzy and unattainable (and the site is called The COOLS after all), but we hope the site gets filled up with juicy content that makes us excited about style and want to shop, rather than just confused/annoyed/jealous of everything. Of course the fact the first post we see when we visit the site is a blurry Lindsay Lohan with a gun to her head bodes oh so well…