Back in the olden days when you had a fancy pants event coming up, your options for being the belle of the ball were limited. You had to sift through the selection at that one dress store in town, run to the mall and brave trying on gowns under the department store fluorescents or beg your fashionable friend to let you rifle through her wardrobe. All that wheelin’ and dealin’ for a one-time wear. That was BRtR, Before Rent the Runway and before the fashion gods gifted us with the ease that is opening our browser window directly into a high fashion closet we can borrow a dress from for a nominal sum.
Rent the Runway’s newest service is about to do for your everyday, 9 to 5, dates and drinks wardrobe what it did in outfitting you for your cousin’s wedding. Like Netflix for luxe designer duds, Rent the Runway is launching a new subscription designer accessories service (now in beta) called Unlimited. For $75 a month, you can select from over 1,000 pieces of “an endless rotation of designer statement pieces.” Pick three, and keep them for as long as you want or swap them for something new. Free, insured shipping gets everything back and forth in just a couple business days.
We’re already big fans of fashion subscription service Le Tote around here. At $75 a month (and that’s the “special beta price”), Rent the Runway’s Unlimited is more expensive than Le Tote’s $19/month jewelry box or $49/month boutique box that includes clothing and accessories. A peek at the labels in Unlimited’s online closet are decidedly top shelf: Moschino, Elizabeth and James, Missoni and Helmut Lang compared to Le Tote’s not-too-shabby roundup of French Connection, House of Harlow and BCBGeneration. Unlike Le Tote and other subscription style services, RtR will let you actually choose what you want to wear instead of sending you a stylist-curated selection, another point in their fashionable favor. The closest RtR gets to clothing, though, are leather jackets. Unfortunately (as we thought when we first saw this), you don’t get an unlimited borrowing spree for Rent the Runway’s dress selection.
You all might think I’m crazy, but I’ve always been hesitant to try Rent the Runway — every time I surf the site, there’s a ghost of a magazine editor in my ear saying, “Come on, just splurge on that designer LBD and you’ll have it in your closet foreverrrrrr.” TBH, spending $50 on a dress for one night gives me more anxiety than spending $300 on something I can wear multiple times (even if I admittedly don’t). But a service like Le Tote or Unlimited sounds more my speed. I never find time to shop and whenever I do I buy the same three things in slightly different variations. 50 to 75 bucks a month for a new (DIFFERENT!) wardrobe? I’m in. Hopefully Rent the Runway expands their scope to include unlimited clothing next!
What do you all think? Will you try Rent the Runway’s Unlimited service? Do you already use it to rent dresses? Are you a Le Tote fan? Share below!
