February 24, 2014 | People
Jeremiah Green combines style and technology with his new fashion app Purely.
“It was all because of a pair of red shoes—well, burgundy, actually,” says Jeremiah Green of the genesis of Purely, the mobile fashion app he launched last summer. Examining the pair of overpriced wing tips, says the project’s founder and CEO, “my brain just kind of went horizontal.” Chatting in the sleek West Loop loft office that Purely shares with two other start-ups, the Deerfield native strikes a fittingly dapper figure—crisp white shirt, navy pants, and a statement-making bright orange belt from Haberdash—as he counts off the synergistic possibilities of fashion and technology, from mobile alerts for in-demand products to the prospect of bid-based buying. “This is where retail should be, and it’s not,” he says. “And it won’t be, unless someone like me comes along and innovates.”
Within a year of his initial brainstorm, he’d fleshed out the idea: Via an easy-to-use mobile interface, Purely showcases the latest, most relevant fashion and gives users access to a wholly unsponsored database of style (Green pegged local designer Samantha Sleeper as Purely’s curatorial director) and, in many cases, the opportunity to purchase pieces right then and there.
The 40-year-old River North resident has been a CPA, an entrepreneur in the burgeoning tech sphere, and, most recently, the president of his family’s catering business. “From a very young age, I knew that I was going to start my own business,” he explains. “And I was going to do my [best] to learn everything I could about the world, about business, so I could ensure a high likelihood of being successful. So that’s really what my journey has been about.”
Purely took off right away, getting recognized as “New and Noteworthy” by Apple and racking up more than a quarter million likes (meaning a user “liked” something across the Purely platform) in a single quarter. “This leads to an immensely valuable [collection] of data that can tell us what’s currently on trend,” Green says, “and I’d like to give that data back to designers for free.”
Featured designers include top-tier labels like Creatures of the Wind, Prabal Gurung, Valentino, Derek Lam, and Alexander McQueen, and popular local lines like Henry & Belle and C/Fan. But Purely’s fashion showcase function is only the tip of the iceberg. “There are so many fascinating things we can do,” Green says excitedly. “We want to become the Wikipedia of fashion—aggregating all the social media that designers [use], their collections, their bios, emerging designers, what’s on trend right now, or just a pair of boots—you’ll be able to find it all.”
photography by maria ponce berre
