Savvy women know all about hiring clothes.
You may have hired your wedding dress (possibly from Losner’s in Stamford Hill which dressed thousands of Jewish brides before lending its final frilled, crystal-embellished confection in 2017). Or perhaps you hired an evening dress in the 80s when hiring was the affordable way to flaunt a fresh frock for every simchah. Or perhaps you hired more recently, from one of the noughties party-wear hire brands.
But in 2020, hiring is no longer only — or even mainly — about party frocks. It’s had a makeover and now extends across our entire wardrobe to include, say, a blazer in oversized grey check by Baum & Pferdgarten (Onloan), black Paul Smith trousers (HURR Collective) and a Louis Vuitton Alma PM in fuchsia (MyWardrobe HQ).
And in 2020, our fashion vocabulary must also include “Collective” because a word formerly used to describe Israel’s kibbutzim has been adopted by the shiny new peer-to-peer lending platform the HURR Collective, and also by the decade-old Vestiaire Collective, to describe their commercial activities.
Together these platforms are the Uber and Airbnb of the fashion world, offering a new way to consume fashion that lets us look super stylish while saving money and saving the planet — or, at least, doing less harm to the planet.
The planet-saving element derives from “circularity.” This is a smart new term for an old concept which thrived commercially until mass-produced clothing killed off “Second-hand Rose.” But sharing clothes didn’t cease entirely: Jewish north Londoner Laurel Herman has been discreetly and successfully recycling high-end pieces at her Belsize Park studio since 1985, while informal “circularity” continues as mums hand down outgrown kids’ clothes and besties swap party frocks.
But now circularity is back in a shiny technological guise promising impressive environmental benefits. Keeping good clothing in circulation for an extra nine months reduces carbon, waste and water footprints by 20 per cent as well as reducing surplus stock going to landfills.
And the benefits are not only environmental. Onloan co-founder Natalie Hasseck, a former JFS student who worked as a creative director for brands such as Chloe, Givenchy, Topshop and John Lewis, explains that she and co-founder Tamsin Chislett wanted to allow women to enjoy clothes “without the guilt.”
Onloan’s focus is on “elevated daywear” so instead of owning one “practical” knit, an Onloan member could rock an Alexa Chung block-colour jumper one month and a Hayley Menzies longline, leopard and floral cardi the next.
Members pay a monthly subscription of £69 to select two items to a value of £500 (or £99 for four pieces to a value of £1,000), picking from a carefully curated coterie of 30-plus contemporary collections that include several Scandi “it” brands as well as Cefinn, Mother of Pearl, Shrimps and Stine Goya.
At MyWardrobe HQ, members can be circular by hiring and lending, and can also buy. In addition to designer arm-candy, there’s everyday-wear, occasion wear, shoes and accessories from more than 500 brands, from Acne Studios and Alexander McQueen to Zandra Rhodes and Zimmermann. Rental costs from £6 per day for a minimum four-day hire.
Consultancy work on car-sharing gave co-founder Sacha Newall the idea for MWHQ: “I saw how, for every car shared, 11 are taken off the road.”
Newall attributes the explosion of interest in alternative ways of consuming fashion to “an incredibly supportive” fashion press which is “genuinely keen to see the fashion industry work in a different way.”
She has a tenuous connection to the Jewish community via her late grandfather, Captain Rupert Allison. One of the British officers who liberated Belsen, he maintained close friendships with several survivors and was “so deeply affected by what he saw,” says Newall, that he “spent his retirement giving talks round the country to ensure the atrocities were never forgotten. He would thoroughly approve of me being in the Jewish Chronicle!”
Because the HURR Collective focuses on the “peer-to-peer element,” involving both lending and borrowing, customers can be “truly circular,” says director of operations, Sasha Sassoon.
The great niece of Rachel Beer (née Sassoon), the pioneering woman journalist who was editor-in-chief of two national newspapers in the 1890s, Sassoon has revolutionary spirit in her DNA.
Noting how well “Rent the Runway” had done in the USA, Sassoon believed there was potential for a similar platform in the UK. “Particularly drawn” to HURR’s “sustainable solution,” she joined HURR in January after six years with the Estée Lauder Company.
Signing up to the HURR Collective is a little like having Paris Hilton as your bestie , opening up her wardrobe with its câche of Balmains, Stella McCartneys and Roland Mourets.
The current dazzling selection of brands has just increased following HURR’s arrival in Selfridges where customers visiting HURR’s physical space in the store are able to rent from 40 Selfridges brands that include Emilia Wickstead and Zimmerman.
Selfridges’ collaboration with HURR is not its first foray into circularity. Last October it unveiled the first physical space for the Vestiaire Collective which was one of the first brands to sell pre-worn designer pieces online.
The initiatives represent a “mission to make circular fashion the retail standard,” said a spokesperson. That sounds very worthy, but if the concept means I can wear an utterly delicious (but utterly impractical) pale pink coat with faux-fur collar (Kitri at Onloan), it’s a philosophy I can get behind.
