I studied Pattern Recognition under Ed Jernigan at the University of Waterloo, and I gotta tell you, it's tough slogging -- quite the fascinating subject -- but tough math.

To me, this sounds like a solution looking for a problem -- I think you need to stop and think about what problem you're trying to solve. If the problem is inventory control, it's probably a piece of cake to make up a dozen or so types of tags, one type for each piece of clothing, a sort of apparel taxonomy. You don't care what colour the sweater is, but you care if it's a sweater or a parka. So just go from there.

Or maybe it's some other problem you're trying to solve ..