Rental fashion is a simple process, which puts you in the driving seat to make a difference to our environment and industry. The service of rental fashion allows you to rent outfits for a certain amount of time, whether it be dressing up for a special occasion or looking smart for a job interview. To help you out with choosing which rental service to use, we have compiled a list of our favourites:

Rotaro 

Fashion that is kind to the planet doesn’t get much better than Rotaro, as they intend to plant a tree with every order! The site gives you access to a multitude of world class designers, with some of the most on trend items we have seen from rental sites. The process of renting from Rotaro is just as easy as purchasing an item from a fast fashion site, with guaranteed free returns and no deposit necessary. Rotaro also offers next day delivery all whilst travelling carbon neutral in reusable bags and boxes, perfect for anyone who leaves buying an outfit till the last minute. 

4Element 

Specialising in rentals for vintage designer jewellery, 4Element acquires some of the most unique designs available to rent. This includes the rental’s proud holding of Haute Couture designs, obtaining pieces from private collectors around the world. 4Element’s rental service is perfect for jewellery lovers, and anyone who wants to make a statement with one of a kind designs. 

By Rotation 

Founder Eshita Kabra-Davies kickstarted By Rotation after seeing first hand effects that fashion waste was having on her motherland Rajasthan, India. Her determination to counteract the environmental impacts of fashion has seen By Rotation transform into one of the most popular accessible and sustainable rental sites, gaining over 100K followers. The process of renting from By Rotation is all done in their app, ensuring that consumers have an easy 2 minute experience when lending or renting. The app is engaging to use, complete with style edits, size categories and trending brands, allowing you to see all the incredible outfits, accessories and jewellery available to you from the click of a button. 

Front Row London

Branding themselves at the ‘Net-A-Porter of renting’ Front Row London operates as a luxury-on-loan site, giving renters access to high end luxurious designer items from up and coming brands or well established brands such as Dior, Alexander McQueen, Fendi and many more. With on site fashion edits consisting of wedding and night out looks, Front Row London makes itself the perfect candidate to use when in need of an occasion piece that you would probably only wear once. 

Cudoni 

If renting still doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you can be sustainable when purchasing items through sites such as Cudoni. Launching in 2017, Cudoni is the UK’s only full service luxury resale platform. The site makes it easier than ever to access vintage items from some of the most luxurious and sought after brands, with jewellery, accessories, clothes and much more available to purchase second hand. On the flip side, if you’re reading this and thinking about that Gucci handbag you haven’t used in 10 years, you can resell your designer items through Cudoni’s simple and seamless service. 

Words By Nadia Clasper

^{Photo Credit: 4Element}

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A new cohort of entrepreneurs are revolutionising the online-shopping game. If you don’t know already, Depop is the e-marketplace app that allows its users to buy and sell clothing (among other items) and in-turn instigates sustainable purchasing decisions for its users.

But how?

With 80% of Depop’s 11 million users being under 25, resale and reuse culture allows them to contribute to reducing their reliance on fast-fashion brands in an affordable, cost-effective way. Due to popular sustainable fashion brands such as People Tree and Ninety Percent charging roughly £50 for an eco-friendly shirt, buying ‘pre-loved’ or vintage on Depop allows items of clothing that may have been thrown away to have a chance at a second life.

The work of Depop store @essiistore does exactly that. The brand focusses on taking vintage pieces and reworking them into new one-off items. Clearly this type of fashion is popularising as the store has 24k followers and is a Depop Community Leader, meaning it works closely with Depop to help grow, guide and educate the community. Charlotte Coulthard, behind the brand states on social media that her favourite thing about selling on Depop is: “being able to combine [her] passion for vintage clothing… and helping the planet to be more sustainable”.

Bella McFadden (aka “InternetGirl”), another Depop Community leader currently boasts 581k followers on the app. Her vintage re-sells on has led her to build herself a career, a e-commerce website and financial stability. Currently her items along with @essiistore, @194local, @sillyyat and other seller favourites are showcased IRL at Oxford Street’s Selfridges.

Until the end of October, the pop-up Depop space will showcase two different sellers a week. Those selected to display their vintage, luxury, reworked, streetwear and independent looks are brands that have been recognised by the app as advocates for reducing fashion’s global impact. The company prides itself on how its platform helps to “empower the next generation to transform fashion”. Chief Marketing Officer, Peter Semple, states “sustainability is changing the landscape of fashion and the Depop community is helping to define this movement”.

Depop’s admiration for people that rework, reuse and recycle is further shown in their collaboration with designer Nicole McLaughlin, the streetwear artist whose entire design premise of based upon upcycling the old to create something new. On Depop YouTube documentary “Creativity & Sustainability with Nicole McLaughlin”, viewers are reeled into Nicole’s world – from thrifting an old Colombia jacket to completely recreating it into a pair of boots.

Her Instagram feed acts as a portfolio for her viral designs – think Capri-Sun slides and tops made entirely from Nike hats. Her art epitomises the exact kind of sustainability Depop loves. Nicole, in fact, first sourced from Depop to make her now-infamous boots, as stated on the video. Her work parallels with the apps’ principle that one seller’s trash is another person’s treasure. Fans of Nicole definitely seem to agree with her green practices:

“Reworking IS the future and it IS a new form of art. This is going to be the next HUGE thing in fashion and for the first time, an actual ground-breaking movement” reads a comment on the video.

Depop, in its small 8 years of being, has managed to garner a cult-following. It has been able to construct a distinctive aesthetic among Gen-Z and the fashion intelligentsia undoubtedly represented by its collaboration Selfridges on its campaign “The New Order – exploring how the digital revolution is changing the way we live and shop”.

The app, known to some, as Instagram with a ‘buy’ button, clearly provides a way for the social media generation to purchase and sell clothing that is sitting inside another person’s wardrobe rather than a landfill. As the stigma behind buying second-hand dissipates, Depop is clearly a front runner in the online fashion world. It lets people maintain individualism with its one-off piece culture, allows young people snatch up bargains and simultaneously helps save the planet all in one place, what’s not to love?

Words by Hena Sharma

Graphics by Katie Janes

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In an age when being eco-conscious is trendy and the pressing issue of sustainability is permeating the fashion industry from runway to high-street, ‘greenwashing’ is the latest buzzword in the limelight. With designers and fast-fashion retailers latching onto eco- friendly fashion, without really considering what being sustainable means, luxury fashion label Mother of Pearl is one of the brands pioneering the movement in attempt to slow down fast fashion and using transparency to set the bar for what it truly means to be a sustainable fashion brand.

When Amy Powney joined East-London label Mother of Pearl after graduating from university in 2006, it was a small luxury, but not sustainable, business. Now, running it herself as Creative Director means she has been able to incorporate the values that have shaped the brand into the sustainable powerhouse it is today. Last year, Powney launched her ground-breaking No Frills line, featuring a collection of fully traceable wardrobe staples from simple denim to classic dresses and tops, with a minimal impact on the planet that doesn’t compromise on style or design. Made up of wonderfully wearable polka-dot dresses made from peace silk, which is produced from cocoons without killing the silkworms that made them, and masculine silhouettes adorned with ultra-feminine details, the success of the brand’s new sustainable direction is in part down to its high-end appeal and wearability. As sales on Mother of Pearl’s website have doubled since the No Frills line was introduced, incorporating sustainability into the brand certainly hasn’t diminished its power as a luxury, high-end label, and its designs are as covetable as ever.

With a focus on transparency, everything is an open book. Mother of Pearl’s website includes a feature allowing consumers to filter all of its garments according to sustainability attributes, with the aim of creating a more transparent space surrounding the processes of producing garments – whether that’s organically-sourced and cruelty- free materials, the social impact of manufacturing, or the item’s carbon footprint.

Though the high-end, luxury market of environment-friendly brands isn’t accessible to everyone, the morals and virtues that lie behind Mother of Pearl are essential in paving the way towards a more sustainable fashion industry overall. Powney’s message goes beyond the chic, luxury garments she produces – consume less, buy quality over quantity, wear your clothes for longer, and when you’re finished with them, sell them on or donate them. The principle of more mindful shopping and consuming less is something that everyone can do, insists Powney, in an age when £140 million worth of clothing goes to landfill each year in the UK alone.

What makes Mother of Pearl stand out from other ecological clothing brands or so-called ethical collections produced by high-street shops? Powney insists that a clothing line can only really be considered sustainable when it takes into account all of the elements of the business of producing clothing garments – from sourcing its materials, manufacturing techniques, animal welfare, the impact of transport and carbon footprint, packaging and so on. As the ‘trend’ of becoming more environmentally-conscious rises in face of the pressing climate crisis, retailers profit off of ‘greenwashing’, claiming to be environment- friendly without being fully transparent about how their clothes are made or their businesses are run. Creating clothing from recycled polyester or replacing plastic packaging with cardboard might be a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t make a clothing line genuinely sustainable. Creating a clothing collection with minimal impact of the planet means thinking through every stage of the process – and Powney acknowledges that she still has a long way to go. There’s always more that can be done, which is why Mother of Pearl’s future will be dedicated to finding even more ways to limit its environmental impact, as well as spreading the message that lies at the root of the brand so that eventually, we can hit a collective stride towards a more sustainable fashion industry.

Words by Ruby McAuliffe

Graphics by Aamir Potrick

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