The Cypriot founder turning online fashion inspiration into shopping

Cypriot founder Nicole Georgiou has launched i spy in London, a new fashion-tech platform aiming to rethink the way people discover, save and shop the outfits they see online. The 25-year-old former finance professional, who moved from Cyprus to London seven years ago, officially unveiled the app at How Matcha in Marylebone, marking the first public launch of a platform built around what she describes as the next generation of fashion discovery. The platform uses proprietary fashion-specific visual search technology to help users identify outfits, discover similar pieces, organise everything they want to buy and shop fashion inspiration from anywhere in one place. The launch event was hosted at How Matcha, an iconic matcha bar and cultural space known for its collaborations across fashion brands, including Miu Miu, Cult Gaia, Joseph and others. For Georgiou, the launch marks a significant moment in her career. After spending three years working in banking, she left finance earlier this year to pursue i spy full-time. However, unlike many startups, i spy did not begin with the intention of building a company. Georgiou originally set out to solve a problem she experienced every day, explaining that she “wasn’t trying to build a startup” but was trying to create something she “genuinely wanted to use”. As someone who constantly discovered outfits across Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and influencers, Georgiou found herself repeatedly trying to track down the clothing behind them. Even when she managed to find the pieces, there was still nowhere to save everything she wanted to buy without relying on screenshots, endless tabs or forgotten links. That personal frustration led to a much bigger observation. The way people discover fashion has completely changed, but the online shopping journey remains fragmented. Georgiou said inspiration today comes from social media, creators and content, meaning people are exposed to more fashion than ever before. However, she said the shopping experience has not evolved in the same way, with i spy aiming to connect that fragmented journey, “from discovery to purchase”, into a single, seamless flow with one tap. According to Georgiou, this shift in consumer behaviour is permanent. She said “discovery now happens everywhere”, but the path from seeing something online to actually finding it and buying it is “completely broken”. There is still no system, she added, that seamlessly bridges inspiration and purchase while preserving someone’s intent until they are actually ready to buy. That insight became the foundation for i spy. Designed as a fashion discovery app, i spy allows users to upload an image or simply share content directly from Instagram, Pinterest or a brand’s website into the app with a single tap, without interrupting the way they naturally browse fashion. Using its fashion-specific visual search technology, the platform identifies the exact clothing items featured in an outfit photo where possible and recommends similar alternatives across thousands of retailers and multiple price points, the company said. In practice, this means a user can spot an outfit online, send it to i spy and begin searching, saving and organising related products almost immediately. Beyond search, the platform allows users to instantly save products into visual boards, organised for holidays, weddings, capsule wardrobes or everyday outfits. The aim is to replace endless screenshots, browser tabs and forgotten links with a more practical way of keeping track of what users actually want to buy. Rather than functioning as just another inspiration platform, Georgiou describes i spy as the place where inspiration becomes something actionable. She said people already use platforms such as Pinterest to collect ideas, but i spy “bridges the gap by turning inspiration into real products you can actually save, organise and buy whenever you’re ready”. The platform also introduces a social discovery experience, allowing users to browse public boards created by other fashion enthusiasts, discover curated products and save items directly into their own collections. At the same time, i spy is not designed to encourage impulse shopping. Instead, the platform is built to preserve purchase intent, allowing users to save products the moment they discover them and return days, weeks or months later when they are ready to buy, with direct links back to the retailer. The launch also marked another important moment for the startup, with Italian fashion brand Marella becoming i spy’s first official brand partner. The platform has also established affiliate partnerships with brands including Isabel Marant, Nina Ricci, Debenhams and many others, allowing users to shop directly through trusted retail partners, the company said. Now available on Apple’s App Store, i spy represents the first public launch of the platform and the beginning of Georgiou’s ambition to build the infrastructure connecting fashion inspiration with online shopping. For Georgiou, the idea remains rooted in the same everyday frustration that started the business. As she put it, “fashion inspiration has never been more accessible”, and finding it, saving it and shopping it should be “just as effortless”. More information about i spy is available at www.ispyplatform.com, through the App Store under “i spy: fashion discovery”, and on Instagram and TikTok at @ispy_platform.