Summer 2026 in NYC has already proven to be one for the books (IYKYK), which is why “cute summer tops” has been an open tab for me, well, all summer long. You know, the ones that are comfy but not as casual as a t-shirt. Elevated but not as formal as a collared shirt. Cool, but with a hint of sexy.
So far I have added this Rachel Anataoff mesh top, the (now sold out) Christopher John Rogers x Old Navy scarf (that I wear as a top), and this Hevron halter top to my closet. But that’s clearly not enough for my upcoming trip to London and the rest of the summering I still have to do. Surely, this is a task to throw to AI, right?
Welcome back to App Diaries, a series where I – a former tech PMM turned stylist and consultant – use, test, push, and interrogate different apps, so you don’t have to.
Daydream, founded by Julie Bornstein in June 2025, is an AI-powered conversational fashion shopping platform. Side note: I have been following Julie since 2015, when I first saw her speak at the Harvard Business School Retail & Luxury Goods Conference (and became an immediate fangirl). Admittedly, I had downloaded the app sometime last year, but it never stuck for me. So I decided, why not give it another whirl in my seemingly elusive search for cute summer tops.
Upon downloading the app, you need to select brands to add to your favorites. I typed “Simon Miller,” “Staud,” “Farm Rio.” It quickly became clear to me that, the more brands I add, the better off future me will be. So I sat there racking my brain, with my closet in view, adding brands of the items I could see: “J.Crew,” “Ganni,” “Levi’s.” At a certain point, I thought: What is wrong with me? Why is this so hard for me? After I had a mini emotional breakdown, I made my way to the chat tab and typed in “cute summer tops that are not t-shirts”.
The Results
Even though I specified no tees, there were a couple of t-shirts mixed into my search results. I felt that my results skewed feminine and romantic even though my “Style DNA” said otherwise (more on that later).
I was excited that I could set price ceilings for different categories. There’s nothing like the jump scare of clicking the link in your favorite influencer’s story, only to find the top you love is $414 (true story). However, based on my results, those settings aren’t steadfast. My tops budget is set at $200, but my results included items up to $225.
Once I found a top I loved, I selected “more like this.” This is where the recommendations ATE. And then, I realized they were way out of my price range (don’t you hate when that happens). So I refined the search with: “like this but up to $200”. The results did stay in my price range, but I needed to prompt it one last time so that all my results weren’t white. That led me to cute summer tops galore.
Honorable Mention
Style DNA: This is a section on your profile that analyzes your style across 6 different attributes, including boldness and romanticism. My boldness score was below 50%. Ouch. Take a peek at my Instagram; I think you’d be hard-pressed to describe my style as anything but bold. I thought I’d be able to move the sliders to reflect my interpretation of my style, but I couldn’t. My best guess is that this score is based on the brands I favorited, the items I hearted, and/or a combination of both. After spending some more time hearting items, I was able to inch this over 50%. (Phew!)
My Request:
Homepage: I appreciate that my favorites and recent searches are front and center when I return to the app. But I can’t save a search, which, after refining the prompt multiple times, I wanted to guarantee the exact parameters. (My hack: I tapped “more like this” on one of the items I hearted from the most refined search)
THE VERDICT
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Rationale: Minus some points for my crash-out. Daydream just needed multiple prompts to get me to cute summer top heaven. But once I got there, it was pretty good.
With a couple of “definite buy” cute summer tops under my belt, I began to consider how we got here. The idea of a fashion aggregator is not new news. In fact, the ShopStyles and the Polyvores of the world cracked that code open in 2007. They also no longer exist. Which, in turn, made me wonder: is Lyst still around? (Do you remember Lyst?!) Turns out, Lyst, founded by Chris Morton and Sebastjan Trepca in 2010, is very much still around.
And the team’s been cooking because they now have a Lyst app (wow!). My very first thought was: these brand colors look an awful lot like Daydream. They were heavily promoting “conversational search,” as the PMM in me would call it, with their full-screen takeover showing me example queries. Lyst clearly has been investing in tech to keep up with the new kids on the block (good for them!) My curiosity was definitely piqued.
Upon downloading, you need to favorite brands, so I copied the brands I inputted in Daydream. To my surprise, and this felt truly game-changing post my aforementioned emotional breakdown, when you tapped one brand, Lyst recommended 2-3 similar brands that you could also favorite. The “similar” brand recommendations could be improved, but this one feature felt groundbreaking.
I headed to the search tab and typed “Cute summer tops that are not t-shirts up to $200”
The Results:
Lyst did respect my price ceiling, but that’s basically all there is to write home about. I was not inspired at all by my results. Nothing made a statement. Nothing really caught my eye. Nothing made me think: “I gotta have this.”
I was really surprised because, given their assisted onboarding flow, Lyst actually had more favorited brands. So I was sure their recommendation algorithm had more signals. I was even curious if it would be better than Daydream’s. (Nope)
I’ll skip ahead to the verdict for you…
THE VERDICT
Score: 1 out of 5
Rationale: The magic began and ended in the assisted onboarding flow (sigh). I actually landed on the best search results by clicking clothing > tops in their search tab and filtering by price - what I just did for the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale. I feel so disappointed because I really had so much hope.
I refuse to give up. Can this be that hard? (Apparently yes). So, on my last stop, I took myself to The Mall. The Mall, founded by Sreya Halder and Ellie Konkser, officially launched in May 2026. It’s, you guessed it, your very own personal online shopping mall.
Since I was already on my third app of the day, I already had a sure-fire list of brands to add to my mall. But you definitely need more to build out your retail universe. My hack: visiting The Mall’s Instagram and adding brands I liked from their curations (most of which are gone since their rebrand and subsequent IG purge, but I suspect more curations are in the queue).
The Results
To my surprise, unlike Daydream and Lyst, my results were organized by brand–or, I guess I should say, store. Which now makes sense, given it’s, well, a mall.
The Mall then surfaced the relevant items in each store to me. It took me a minute to figure out how to get to all the relevant items. I needed to tap directly on the arrow (tapping anywhere else leads to the brand page, completely pulling me out of the search). Once I figured that out, it was game on. I started saving tops (yes, all in my price range thanks to the price filter)
My biggest surprise was that my search results weren’t all from the brands I saved in my mall. It was kind of a mixed bag in an order I couldn’t figure out. The search results were okay, but they weren’t screaming “me”
I visited my wishlist to tally up the number of items I saved, and when I got to the bottom, I realized the Mall surfaces “similar options”. Now, this curation was gold. It was as good as what I got on Daydream (maybe better?), but after my three prompts. (Sreya, Ellie, if you’re reading this, I need you to put this above the fold and blast it from the rooftops.) I literally doubled my wishlist; the recommendations were that good.
Honorable Mention:
IG/TikTok Imports: You can import brands you find on IG (and TikTok) directly into the app. I’m psycho and have a never-ending folder of “brands to watch” on IG that I imported. So the next time I get targeted by another new-to-me brand ad, I’ll add it to my Mall. That way, I can feel like I’m holding on to them without clogging my feed or my inbox. (Hallelujah)
My Request:
Search x My Mall: The Mall is your own personal universe of brands you love. I just want to take it one step further: the ability to search my entire curated mall for the exact item I’m looking for, without digitally walking into every store.
THE VERDICT
Score: 3.75 out of 5
Rationale: If I could search my Mall, this would have easily been a 4 (maybe even a 4.5). My wishlist on the Mall is my favorite of the three. It was definitely the app where I felt like I fell down a rabbit hole and got lost in cute summer tops goodness (finally!). I just wish I got to that feeling faster. My hunch is that I’m going to continue using The Mall the way I use Goodreads - a way to keep track of items that I definitely want to come back to in the future.
For the hell of it, I threw my search into Google (humor me) to see what would come up. I don’t know if it’s because my expectations were really low, I’m signed in across every device, and Chrome is my default browser, but the results weren’t that bad.
So what does that say? Is online shopping broken? 100%. Can AI help? Maybe. (But I definitely don’t want AI to do the shopping for me). Is there white space? Absolutely. And maybe, just maybe, a small part of me misses when I’d get the Delia’s catalog in the mail, sticker every item I wanted, and methodically make a wishlist to present to my mom. Ahh, the good ol’ days.
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