Toronto fashion startup lets you rent high-end everyday clothes
In the age of fast-fashion, it can be difficult to find original, fashionable and sustainable clothing options. And if you hate outfit-repeating but also care about the environment, you've probably found yourself in a bind.
Luckily, some innovative fashion companies are addressing the issue with everything from Frank and Oak's subscription boxes to Leafii's accessories made out of leaves.
Another company is taking a different approach to fashion in this day and age. Meet dresst.
For a membership fee of $100, dresst will send you three designer clothing items of your choice each month. You get to keep the items for 30 days, then you send them back and the company will send you three more.
The membership includes free shipping both ways as well as dry cleaning and insurance.
The company was founded by Toronto-natives Laura Bryce and Kelly Pigeon. The two women worked in the corporate world for over 10 years and constantly found themselves trying to keep up with style trends.
"We won’t tell you exact numbers, but between the two of us, we owned north of 400 items," they wrote on the company's website.
"A shocking amount of clothing. And yet we were still spending upwards of $4,000 per year to add more clothes. And all we ended up with was a closet full of clothes, and still the constant problem of 'having nothing to wear.'"
When Bryce and Pigeon also learned that the average person throws away 81 lbs of clothes and the fashion industry contributes 26 billion lbs to landfill waste, they were inspired to make a change.
"So why rent? Because it’s the future," Pigeon said. "You no longer need to own a car that sits in the garage 22 hours a day, buy movies and music, or leave 80 per cent of your wardrobe untouched. Technology makes it easy to get what you want, when you want it."
The items dresst offers are of quality, with the average value of each item sitting between $200 and $300.
You can pause or cancel your membership at anytime, and each customer is allowed one swap per month if something doesn't look or fit right.
Bryce and Pigeon also drew inspiration from the growing trend in the U.S., where popular clothing-rental company Rent the Runway was recently valued at $1 billion.
But the Canadian market for high-end, every day clothing rentals remains fairly uncompetitive. At least for now.
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