There was an advert on my Facebook timeline for Frontrow. London's first luxury designer clothing renting company. It works by allowing you to rent from hundreds of styles featuring up and coming as well as more established designers such as Chanel, Fendi and Gucci. They are also available for styling advice and can send you your perfect outfit the same day.
Their buying is based off of votes, which we, the customer, votes for. WE vote for what clothes we want to be available, and the company buy which ones are most popular.
Rental periods are for five days, but they can mayor it for you. They offer the dry-cleaning and offer optional insurance for minor damages.
So, what do you think?
Personally, I'm not either way on this one. If someone has a black tie event to go to and think that Gucci bag for £600 to rent for 5 days is worth it then all the power to them. If anything it's helping aid our ever consuming society. We constantly want, once we've got it, we want something else. This company will hopefully help to break that cycle. We can enjoy the item for a few days then send it bag and enjoy something else. Seems a lot more environmentally friendly to me. Although there has been a consistent decline in the frequency that people are shopping for clothing, Mintel found that one in three UK consumers (34%) have bought garments once a month or more during the last year (Dover, 2019).
There are however some obvious issues which can come with renting designer goods online. The first is sizing. As many of the clothing rental companies are online, it's hard to determine what size you're going to need - especially if you've never had the luxury of buying into designer clothing before so know nothing about the sizing. The second is the risk of the goods being damaged. If the customer is using the hiring service, this is assuming they cannot afford the product outright, therefore if anything happened this could prove very problematic. The final issue is the cost. I had a look on Frontrow and the cost of hiring a Gucci bag costs around £200+, which by any means is still not cheap or affordable.
I believe hiring clothes might be a useful way to lessen our need to purchase, but like any new systems there are some creases which need ironing out as well a changing peoples perceptions towards those who do rent their clothes.
Dover, S. (2019). Login to Mintel Reports - Mintel Group Ltd.. [online] Academic.mintel.com. Available at: http://academic.mintel.com/display/927620/?highlight [Accessed 8 Jan. 2019].