And the bride wore … a rental gown: is hiring clothes the future of fashion?

This weekend, Carrie Symonds married Boris Johnson in a wedding dress she had rented. She isn’t alone. From dresses to shoes to hairbands, clothes hire is growing fast

 

When Carrie Symonds married Boris Johnson over the bank holiday weekend, it wasn’t in a dress handed down by a relative, or a custom-made designer frock destined to take up space in her wardrobe for years to come. It was in a dress she had rented for a few days from a website called My Wardrobe HQ.

You might not expect a person who spends tens of thousands redecorating a flat that she will only temporarily live in to be much of an economiser, but it turns out that Symonds – now Johnson – is a frequent renter. “Carrie has always rented from us,” says Sacha Newall, the founder of My Wardrobe HQ, who had no idea that this particular dress was destined for Westminster Cathedral. “As a regular customer, nothing flagged as being unusual about the order.”

The embroidered tulle gown, the work of the Greek luxury designer Christos Costarellos, reportedly set Symonds back £45, whereas it would have cost £2,870 to buy – about £1,500 more than the average wedding dress in the UK in 2019.

Renting clothes – everything from dresses and shoes to bags and hairbands – has become increasingly popular over the past few years. With about £140m worth of used clothing being sent to landfill in the UK every year, according to the charity Wrap, it is seen as a relatively guilt-free way to partake in fashion.

Even the pandemic didn’t make a dent. “I’m very surprised that we did have rentals,” says Eshita Kabra-Davies, the founder of By Rotation, which is part social network and part rental platform and has more than 60,000 users. “It would be for things like celebrating birthdays with partners or housemates – that dopamine dressing thing.”