What a restyle can't tell you

It doesn't know your measurements

Encore keeps your body and pose, so the proportions you see are yours. What it cannot know is how a specific garment is cut — where the shoulder seam lands, whether the rise sits at your waist or your hip, how a size runs in one brand against another. Two jackets that look identical in a render fit completely differently in a changing room.

It doesn't know fabric

Weight, drape and stretch are most of what makes an outfit wearable, and none of them are visible in a still image. A render cannot tell you that a knit will bag at the elbows, that a linen will crease within an hour of sitting down, or that a stiff fabric which looks sharp standing up will ride awkwardly when you move.

Its light is a mood, not your Tuesday

Renders tend toward even, flattering light. Colour in particular shifts hard between that and a strip-lit office at 9am in February. If a look turns on an exact shade, check the real thing in the light you will actually wear it in.

It doesn't know your life

The render styles the outfit, not the day it has to survive. A silhouette that photographs beautifully may be useless if you cycle to work, carry a toddler, or need pockets. That is not a flaw in the render — it is simply a question it was never asked.

The four-check habit

None of this makes a restyle less useful. It makes it the right kind of useful: a fast, near-free way to settle direction, so the expensive decisions afterwards are made deliberately.

• Check the brand's size guide against your own measurements, not the label you usually take.
• Read the fabric composition, and be honest about whether you will iron it.
• Look at the colour in the light you will wear it in, not the shop's.
• Ask what the outfit has to do that day — walking, carrying, sitting for hours.