Fashionably Late

The rest of us normal people understand how ridiculous it would be to purchase a new outfit for every time you leave the house.  We buy our clothes to wear over and over again and love forever.  Personally, I would be heartbroken if I couldn’t wear my clothes repeatedly for fear of the world noticing.  I buy pieces because I love them.  I get excited when I wear my favorite things and I like to style them in numerous ways.  I admire celebrities who are not afraid to wear the items they love on many occasions.  Sienna Miller, for example, loves her white leather oxfords and creates some truly great looks with them. 

            Now, one thing I do understand is that you simply cannot wear the same formal gown to more than one event.  It is just one of those unwritten rules (actually it probably has been written down somewhere) that should never be broken.  But formal gowns can creep up into the thousands dollar range, and who has the funds to pay that kind of money for a gown they will wear once? 

Well, most celebrities actually don’t pay for most of the clothes they wear.  In order to get exposure, designers lend out gowns to celebrities for events.  Should the given celebrity wear their garment, it could be photographed and displayed all over the Internet and in the tabloids, giving the designer a ton of attention (i.e. free advertising). 

But then again, most of us are not celebrities.  We cannot afford to spend ridiculous amounts on pieces we wear once.  So what do we do?  Well, believe it or not, there is a solution.  Renttherunway.com is a new website that lets the users rent extremely expensive garments for much less.  They send you the dress you requested in two sizes, guarantee that it will arrive on or before the date you need them and let you keep them for a few days to wear to your event.  The cost of the rental ranges from $50 to $200.  Not bad when that same dress may retail for $4,000. 

When I first heard of this site I thought was an excellent idea.  I can see many people preferring to spend up to $200 on a dress they will probably never wear again versus several hundred to a few thousand.  I was curious to see how someone who attends more events than I felt about this new website. 

Over Thanksgiving break I showed it to my mother who agreed that the site was very practical.  As someone who goes to several events a year with the same people, she doesn’t like to wear the same garment too many times.  She also is extremely picky, fashion obsessed and loves to wear designer dresses.  However, she knows that spending over five hundred dollars on a dress is a luxury that cannot be repeated very often.  She told me, “I would be completely comfortable paying a max of $200 for a dress I’d only get to wear once.  I’ve definitely spent more than that on a dress I wore once and then realized I hated and never wore again.” 

This website can also let people take more risks with their wardrobe choices.  There are many dresses I have seen that are very trendy and chic at the time, but I could never buy them because they are too “of the moment”.  In a few months, that trend could be dead and I wouldn’t want to wear it again.  Also, there are numerous dresses I have seen on the runway and dreamed about wearing but knew I never could because I simply do not have hundreds or thousands of dollars to spend on one garment.  So ladies (and possibly gentlemen), check out renttherunway.com next time you have a wedding or charity event.  They might have that great Giambattista Valli gown or Proenza Schouler cocktail dress you’ve been wishing you could wear but never thought you could!