If you want nice clothes now you can rent them. [View all]

Nice clothes have become unaffordable even for people with good paying jobs.

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Lydia Patel made a big decision two years ago: she stopped buying clothes.

"In my busy life nowadays — I realized especially after Covid — I go to work in scrubs," explains the Minnesota pharmacist, YouTube creator and mom of three. "I don't dress up anymore for work, so I really don't need a whole lot of new clothes."

After seeing the outfits she rarely wore to kids' birthday parties and daytime events languishing in her closet, she thought, why not rent her wardrobe instead?

While Rent the Runway set the tone for the clothing rental industry when it launched 16 years ago — offering designer gowns for a night — it and trendy competitors such as Nuuly now let consumers borrow a set number of items, including dresses, jeans and even winter coats, for a monthly price.

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Over two years later, Patel says, deciding to rent her clothes "has opened up access to more quality pieces that are unique and fit what I want to wear at the moment without breaking the bank."

And she doesn't have to worry about storing or washing the items she borrows. At the end of the rental term, she returns the pieces to the companies and they handle the shipping and cleaning.

"I don't even know what you do with silk — and I don't want to," she says.

Patel is just one of more than a half a million women — this industry caters almost exclusively to women — who are using clothing rental platforms, according to some of the companies' public data.

The industry is worth $2.6 billion, and is projected to more than double in value by 2035, according to market research firm, Future Market Insights. Its growth is a signal that shoppers are looking for budget-friendly alternatives just as inflation and tariffs threaten to push clothing prices higher.

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https://www.npr.org/2025/11/17/nx-s1-5607994/clothes-rental-nuuly-rent-the-runway-tariffs-prices