Rent the Runway gives college women chance to be Cinderellas

Ladies, remember your $100+ prom dress? The one hanging in the back of your closet at your parents’ house?

Sure, that dress was great that night, but you wore it once. Now it’s sitting at home, wasting space in a garment bag.

Rent the Runway is a creative solution to this problem. Instead of paying a lot of money for a dress you’ll only wear once from a boutique, RTR allows a women to rent a dress for nearly half the price and return it after use.

Rent the Runway provides a place for women to find a pricey dress (ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars) for a fraction of the price. This option is great for women who plan to wear the dress once.

Recently, RTR reported that it has representatives at 125 campuses nationwide. RTR representatives also said it “creates the Cinderella experience for women everywhere.”
IU’s campus representative is Kelsey Wieties.

The website offers events divided into categories such as date, formal, party and wedding, as well as designers ranging from Nicole Miller to Vera Wang. After a woman chooses a dress, she can select the rental date and the complementary back-up size.

Dry-cleaning is handled by the company, and shipping the dress back is free.

“I absolutely love the concept that Rent the Runway has brought to our campus,” junior and Kappa Delta sister Brandi Chang said via e-mail. “The famous saying ‘a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear’ is simply irrelevant with RTR at IU. I am very excited to watch RTR grow and gain recognition on our campus.”  

Chang competed in Rent the Runway’s “Sorority that Wore it Best” contest last year, where she and representatives from other sororities each wore the same style and color of dress in a photo. The woman who “wore it best” was determined by “likes” to the Facebook photos. The competition was ultimately won by Alpha Delta Pi.

Junior Morgan Hochheiser, an Alpha Delta Pi sister, said she thinks Rent the Runway is a neat idea.

“I like being able to rent a dress for an event more than buying a dress I’ll only wear once,” she said.

— Brittany Tempest