I grew up in a tiny town without a nearby mall or clothing store in sight. Before the miracle of online shopping took off, I was more or less limited to traveling two hours to the nearest city or ordering clothes through a catalog (wait–do people still do that?). Around seventh grade, I realized that, thanks to my trusty computer, I could buy the same clothes found in my favorite magazines without trekking around the state and promptly ordered much of my back-to-school wardrobe online.

Then I got a nice big package in the mail and quickly discovered that ordering jeans, shoes, and jackets without testing them out in the dressing room wasn't as easy as it seemed. Since that very fateful first shipment in the late '90s, the UPS man and I have quite the relationship: ordering, delivering, returning, delivering, etc.

While Sears has not proven itself to be a technology trailblazer in the past, the department store is about to make a splash in the world of online shopping with a three-dimensional fit model that will allow shoppers to plug in their sizes, upload their pictures, and try on clothes virtually. "My Virtual Model" could potentially make shopping online seamless and decrease the miles logged by UPS.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

The new search process will let shoppers scan an image of a style they like, whether it's from Cosmopolitan magazine or any other source that has been digitized, and search for that item from Sears' and other retailers' digitized merchandise. Shoppers may e-mail their virtual model's outfits to friends and get instant responses on whether the looks work.

In the future, the virtual shopping process will let shoppers "rate" each others' looks, and enable the best shoppers to act as advisers, said Louise Guay, president and a founder of My Virtual Model, the Montreal-based company that holds the patents to the technology.

I have never shopped at Sears, nor have I perused their website, but the ability to try things on and create outfits online is very appealing to me. If the site brings tweens and teens in just for the entertainment factor and their products impress, this interactive application will be a really simple way to build a loyal fan base outside of their existing one. If this is successful, other brands will soon be forced to rethink the way they sell clothing online.