You know the feeling.
You find a brand you love, lose it, find it again, forget the name, open six tabs, close five, and somehow end up buying something forgettable from somewhere you didn't mean to go. Meanwhile the brand you actually wanted is still out there. In a tab you closed, a screenshot you forgot you took, or an Instagram post you'll never find again.
Independent fashion is everywhere. Which, it turns out, is exactly the problem.
These brands don't have the marketing budgets of the big players. They don't show up first in search. They live in corners of the internet you have to already know about to find. And once you do find them, there's nowhere to keep them. So you lose them again. The cycle repeats. And somehow the fast fashion giants win again.
Modetrace exists because that's a terrible way to discover clothes you actually care about.
All the independent brands worth knowing. One place.
No more tabs. No more lost screenshots. No more accidentally settling.
We look for brands that are independent, committed to some form of sustainability, and that have what we call:
Kalopsis.
That instant, wordless recognition that something has aesthetic quality. You know it when you see it. We do too.
We currently showcase … brands, and we add more as often as we can.
Are you a wanderer or a hunter?
There are two kinds of fashion moments. The ones where you know exactly what you want. And the ones where you don't, and you just want to look. Both are good. We built Modetrace for both.
Start scrolling. That's it.
Our scroll experience lets you drift through fashion from every brand on the platform, one piece at a time, for as long as you want. No goal, no search bar, no pressure. Just you and an endless feed of clothes worth looking at. It's the fun kind of doom scroll. The kind you actually feel good about afterward.
Save the items you like
See something you like? Tap it. Make a profile and everything you like gets saved, so you never lose track of that one piece again. Organise your saves into collections and mood boards, whatever makes sense to you. A summer wishlist. Things you can't afford yet. An entire aesthetic you're building toward.
Invite your friends
And because taste is more fun shared, you can invite your friends. See what they're saving, let them see yours. (Don't worry, you can keep anything private. Some collections are nobody's business but yours.)
Sometimes you know exactly what you're after. A stunning dress for your best friend's wedding. A winter coat that'll actually last. The perfect white shirt you've been meaning to replace for two years. For that, there's catalogue mode.
The whole platform's catalogue, open to explore. Search for something specific, or filter your way to it by type, gender, and more. Two ways to browse, depending on how your brain works that day: a traditional grid, like most fashion sites, or a category carousel that lets you move sideways through styles.
Same clothes, same brands. Just you, in the driver's seat.
See something you have to have? Click through to the brand's own website and buy it directly from the people who made it. Or save it for later in your profile, for when you're ready.
We're not a marketplace. Not yet, anyway. For now we're focused on doing one thing properly: helping you discover. The rest can come later. One step at a time.
There's something I should tell you↓Okay, time to be honest.
You've seen me say "we" a lot.
There is no we. It's just me.
One person, building this whole thing alone, mostly at night and on weekends. I can't tell you my name yet, and I can't show you my face. Not because I'm being mysterious for the fun of it, but because I have a full-time job at a tech startup here in Spain, and they don't know I'm building this. They don't know I'm hoping to leave. So for now, I'm just the person behind Modetrace. That's all I can be.
It started with a wedding dress
Here's the part that might surprise you. I don't work in fashion. I never have. I'm an outsider who stumbled into this completely by accident.
It started with my sister and my cousins. I'd watch them scroll through the same handful of giant fast fashion websites for hours, never quite finding what they wanted, slowly settling for something they didn't really love. The worst was watching them hunt for a dress for a wedding. Days of searching. Dozens of tabs. And almost always, in the end, the same three brands everyone already knows.
So I started building. Nothing serious at first. Just a small project to help them save the brands they liked in one place. But the more I told people about the idea, the more it sounded like it could actually be a business. So I kept going.
One thing I should be upfront about: I'm not a programmer. What you're looking at is an MVP, a first version, held together by a guy learning most of this as he goes. Some things will be rough. Some things will break. If you find a bug, you're probably not imagining it.
Where this is actually going
Right now, Modetrace is a discovery platform. But discovery is only step one of something much bigger. The vision is simple, even if it isn't easy. Help independent brands and designers from around the world take on the fast fashion giants and win. Help them reach the people who would love what they make, if only they could find it. And use that to push the whole industry somewhere better. More sustainable. Fairer to the people who actually make our clothes.
That's the long game. Discovery is just how it starts.
Here's where you come in
I want to do this full time more than almost anything. But I can't quit my job on a hope. So I've set one goal, and I'm putting it right here in public for everyone to see and hold me to.
When Modetrace reaches 1,000,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, I quit my job, go all in, and finally show you who I am.
If any of this resonated, here's how you help. Follow along on Instagram and TikTok. Like things, leave a comment, share the brands you love. Use the app, save what you like, tell a friend. Every one of those moves the number.
Let's get to a million. Then I'll come say hi properly.