It’s never been a better time to be a lover of high fashion. Thanks to a new Web site called Rent the Runway, those remarkable fabric concoctions you see in the glossy magazines are no longer the stuff of daydreams. It’s now as easy to rent a dress by Diane Von Furstenberg as it is to pick out a video on Netflix, according to the New York Times.
This “recession-era twist on the Internet rent-by-mail model” allows would-be fashionistas to rent haute couture for $50 to $200, which includes four nights’ rental and dry cleaning. The garments are shipped directly to the renter, who returns them via prepaid envelope.
Customers have the option of buying $5 damage insurance, but watch out: if the dress is destroyed — say drunken Uncle Bernie spills a bottle of red wine on you at the wedding — you’ll be responsible for the full retail price of the piece. (While I don’t know much about high fashion, I do know that you’ll want to stay away from Uncle Bernie; the price you pay to rent the thing will only purchase about one sequin of it.)
Founded by two Harvard Business School graduates, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Carter Fleiss, the Web site is inspired by the age-old story of the demoralized wedding guest who can’t find a thing to wear, nor afford a new outfit.
As Hyman watched her younger sister struggling with just such a dilemma, a light bulb went on in her mind. “Here was this young girl who loves fashion and was willing to spend a good portion of her salary on a dress that she’s only going to wear once or twice, and I thought, there has to be a solution for this,” she told the Times.
Now, a week into operations with seed funding from Bain Capital Ventures and an inventory of 160 garments, the site has 20,000 women signed up. From now on, every wedding will need something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a red carpet to show off something rented.
Photo courtesy of fashion_10117 via flickr.