R and R Black / 01 May 2025 / Categories: City, Services, People, Creative, Entrepreneurs

By Rotation the way to wear Zimmerman under £100

The best for less renting out your wardrobe is the latest for cash strapped girls

I want to share By Rotation. I just rented a Zimmerman dress for a christening, I absolutely loved it. I had it for about a week. All I had to do was wear it and return it. The cleaning etc. was all up to the renter, as it turns out a glamourous woman in Twickenham, my size with a wardrobe to die for. The beauty about finding a renter the same size with similar taste.

I absolutely love the Zimmerman brand, a summer dress for one wear would cost new anywhere for £1000- £3000 secondhand £300-£1000 if you can find what you like and can take the risk on fit so By Rotation is making that one time special occasion dress available from someone else’s closet. It’s basically a database of personal wardrobes available to share for a fee, significantly less than the cost of the item retail.

The strap for this business is the world’s largest shared closet, started in London in 2019 and this year expanding to the USA and the Middle East as the challenge to tackle our fast fashion consumption becomes more and more pressing. I am a conscious consumer I’d say and this is the very first time I have used a rental platform for special event dressing. That said I have followed Victoria Prews story the founder of Hurr another clothes recycling proposition app, website, platform and front page cover girl for Forbes magazine as a powerful under 30 CEO having raised over £10,000,000 in venture capital.

Both Victoria Prew and Eshita Kabra Davies have hit on and elimimated from their model the cost of holding inventory. For Kabra Davies’s the concept is renting out your own wardrobe so no need to store and clean inventory, that is all done by the wardrobe owner, for Prew the brands provide the inventory for Hurr and do all the cleaning and sending out to renters.

They are just platforms that connect people for a more sustainable fashion future for everyone.

I’ve done it once. I did love my dress. So much I didn’t really want to give it back, even though I don’t have anywhere else to wear it. I know this doesn’t make sense but for many women fashion is a feeling. Why we’ve all purchased things we’ve never worn.

I couldn’t share my wardrobe for money, it’s not good enough but I am interested whether enough women will do this, rent out their wardrobes and or be prepared to rent a dress from a random “renter” like a seller on EBay or Vinted. I took good care of the dress, didn’t fall over, get legless but not sure what happens if you get a red wine tipped over you or how damage to items is handled and who pays. I did feel a little worried in case I trashed the dress by mistake. Never a lender nor a borrower be.

All the press would lead you to believe the clothes rental market, secondhand clobber market is the one to watch expected to grow in the UK alone to £280 billion by 2027 according to Thredup. Global data said they expected the secondhand clothing market to grow by 67.5% between 2022 and 2026.

I will tell you when I received a compliment for the dress and I without reserve proudly mentioned I’d rented my frock for the sustainably street cred, the lady older than me in her 50s said sort of like she’d just smelled something unpleasant “I’ve heard people do that with hats”

I am unsure whether the Hurr app or the By Rotation app for that matter will actually take off or are making any money yet. I doubt it. I just don’t see the behaviour changing that quickly. That said I’ve done it and now I am telling you lot.

This is definitely a good thing for encouraging a more conscious approach to the fashion we buy and good things do take time.