Dyking up Like.com

“Imitation is the most serious form of flattery” — Proverb

I’ve found the next gig for Carson Kressley, the fashion maven on Queer Eye. Last week, Walter S. Mossberg’s column in The Wall Street Journal pointed readers to a site called Like.com.

He writes, “Most shoppers would admit to, at one time or another, looking for an item based on seeing it worn by a celebrity. No matter that most of us don’t remotely resemble celebrities, nor do we share their shrewd fashion sense or Hollywood budget. We know that the objects seen on camera start trends.”

“But without the superstar luxury of a personal shopper, most of us don’t know where to begin looking for the necklace we saw Jennifer Aniston wearing at her latest movie premiere.”

“Starting today, a new Web site called Like.com hopes to help solve this problem. It displays recent photos of about a thousand celebrities (mostly female), with a focus on their purse, jewelry, shoes or watch — but not their clothing. Beside a close-up of the celebrity item, Like.com shows similar products with different price tags and/or different brands, along with a link to buy the product online.”

Since Mossberg writes about technology, his review focused on the complicated visual search engine than enables its functionality. I’m mentioning it at Queercents because it provides consumers with a low cost alternative to the expensive version worn by a celebrity.

SheFinds.com gave its own review, “Like.com is a visual search engine, essentially allowing us to search for items by their appearance, rather than just text. Now we don’t even have to be able to read and write to be able to shop. Just have to have the bag Jessica Alba was carrying on the red carpet? Just click on it and Like.com will compare its color, texture, size, etc.., to millions of “like” items on the web, and display the best matches. The old adage holds true, a picture is worth a thousand words! Text searches are so last season.”

I agree… it’s a great concept and frugal too. However, I was disappointed when I checked it out for myself. Why? I’m never going to want to carry a purse like Paris Hilton, wear shoes like Mischa Barton and some might find this unbelievable, but I don’t even know what show or movie made Jessica Biel famous and therefore why would I want to copy any of her accessories.

In my opinion, Like.com needs to dyke up the site a bit. I would like to find a white t-shirt similar to the one worn by Maria Bello, a chunky boy watch of the likes of Jeanine Garofalo or smart, sassy glasses in the Tina Fey genre. I would even be tempted to search for an argyle sweater look-a-like that Ellen might sport on a chilly day in LA.

But Fergie, Jessica Simpson and Beyonce I’m not… which is why I think I’ve found Carson Kressley’s next calling. Kressley needs to give Like.com the queer eye. And he’ll be the first to ask, where are all the guys? Today, the celebrities are mostly female, but gay men everywhere would be clicking for “likeness” if equal time was given to Patrick Dempsey, Jake Gyllenhaal and Matt Damon. Like it or not… the site needs to be butchified for the queer consumer.