A Frugal Fashionista's Fantasy

High fashion and retail have two things in common: their outrageous designs and their even more outrageous price tags. To put it plainly, dressing in high fashion is not synonymous with having a budget; especially if you are struggling with a strict, starting salary or college budget, aka you are lacking in sufficient funds for anything but the necessary. New and upcoming businesses are beginning to prove this conventional idea, the inability to afford fabulous things, wrong.

The price to dress to the nines is getting more expensive by the minute. With more focus now than ever on labor laws, sufficient funds to pay workers an adequate paycheck for the amount of time devoted to their labor is more than necessary. Also, the price of cotton has begun to rise after the non-profit organization, War on Want, warned designers and producers at London’s Fashion Week of the decreasing amount of available cotton. Pakistan and China, two of the largest cotton producing areas, have suffered from torrential downpours and flooding killing a vast majority of their crops.

Regardless of the reasoning for skyrocketing prices, fashion is becoming a burden, but fortunately society has found a solution. The new craze in the fashion world are two free websites, RentTheRunway.com and Gilt.com, who have devoted themselves to providing the consumer with a high-fashion look for about a fourth of the price.

Rent the runway, whose motto is “Love.Wear.Return,” is a business based on the idea of renting a dress, wearing it and then returning it for a small fee. Women of all ages and sizes have the ability to rent a dress, handbag, or jewelry for any occasion and then have it shipped straight to their door. No paying for dry cleaning, tailoring or spending endless hours searching for that perfect ensemble.

Still not sold on the idea? Not only does the website send you the dress you order, but it also sends you a second size of the same dress, just in case that first one doesn’t fit like a glove. Plus, we all know once you wear a dress to an event, it will be a while before you want to wear it again, making it extremely difficult to get your money’s worth.

Classy little black dress can be rented for $150, yet you would have to pay $1,395 to own it.

Compliments of Rent the Runway

Want something a little more casual? This $350 Milly sundress can be rented for $50.

 Compliments of Rent The Runway

Gilt Groupe provides upper-scale clothing and accessories for women, men, children and even your home. Oh and if you don’t like the idea of any of those, they also provide Jetsetter vacations to five-star hotels all around the world at a discounted price. Like Rent the Runway, Gilt.com requires a membership to the website, which sometimes may have a waitlist of about a day, but there are no fees or expenses besides your purchase.

The best thing about the site is that it is always changing. While some of the high fashion brands the website featured yesterday were Zac Posen, Judith Lieber, and Vera Wang, today the site is focusing on brands including: Kate Spade, D&G Jewelry and even a wedding gown shop. Hotel deals taking place now are located in New York, South Africa, Costa Rica, and Berlin. New sales with new designers begin everyday and continue to change every hour.

For example, Protégé Vintage Jeans regularly priced at $270 are sold for $138, and a Vera Wang sequin cocktail dress whose original price was $960 was sold on Gilt for $336. Due to the constant renovating of the site every hour, images were not available to post here but I encourage you to check out both sites and become a part of this new fashion fad.