“I started looking for a digital wardrobe app in 2020 when we were stuck inside and I was daydreaming about outfits I would wear once the world was open again,” says Toluwa Akindele-Ajani, a self-proclaimed ‘fast fashion lover going slow’. “I was looking for something that would help me keep track of outfits I wanted to plan and that is when I came across Whering.” A personal styling app that digitises users’ wardrobes, Whering is one of a growing number of fashion services, and Akindele-Ajani is one of a growing number of fashion consumers flocking to them.

An informal poll of my online followers showed that 89% would be more inclined to use services over buying new items. Admittedly, they likely follow me due to an existing interest in alternative approaches to fashion, but wider data supports this outlook. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, circular business models including rental and repair could represent 23% of the global fashion market by 2030, up from just 3.5% in 2021. 

Whering was downloaded 10,000 times during its launch week in 2020 and now has over 250,000 users; repair platform The Seam has reported a 20% month-on-month customer increase since December 2021; and in its 2022 Project Earth report, Selfridges reported renting 2,163 items and facilitating 28,493 repairs.

“I thought we must be able to carry on this love affair that we have with fashion in other ways,” says Jade McSorley, co-founder of rental platform Loanhood, which specialises in promoting emerging and independent designers, as well as allowing users to rent out their own wardrobes. “As a business, our main goal is to keep clothes in circulation.”

With all three co-founders coming from a fashion background, they were used to the idea of stylists borrowing items for shoots and celebrities loaning looks for red carpet appearances, and it seemed like a positive solution for both the consumer desire for new clothes and the (slightly cheeky) practice of buying things, wearing them once, then sending them back. “[Rental] puts the power back in the consumers’ hands, so they feel like those behaviours can be positive rather than detrimental,” McSorley says.

Unsurprisingly, it was pioneering small businesses and start-ups like Loanhood that led the way in the fashion service revolution, but even fast fashion brands are hopping on the bandwagon, having witnessed just how quickly fashion consumers have embraced new business models. The likes of H&M, Zara and Uniqlo have all launched repair services, with the latter launching a complementary online repair advice platform too. The Restory, however, was way ahead of the curve. Launched in 2015, it now boasts partnerships with brands and retailers including Farfetch, Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols. “We are trying to give people an easy and trusted way to engage with these [aftercare] services so that they can fall in love with their favourites all over again. We want to give people that jolt, that new feeling when it comes back from us and it’s in a box, it’s wrapped, it’s cleaned,” says Vanessa Jacobs, who co-founded the platform after she found repairs services in London wanting after a move from New York.

The importance of services that allow you to ‘fall in love with your favourites’, plan fun new outfits or bring old items back to life is increasingly clear. A report by sustainability thinktank The Hot or Cool Institute found that a sufficient wardrobe – one which is aligned with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C – consists of 20 outfits or 74 garments (including shoes). It also found that the richest share of the population in the UK needs to reduce garment purchases by 80%, stating that “reducing purchases of new clothes is the most effective action to reduce the carbon footprint of fashion consumption”. And services can certainly help in this mission. “Using Whering has helped me be less impulsive and more mindful when it comes to shopping and this is the approach I always intend to take moving forward,” says Akindele-Ajani.

Sustainability is certainly a big driver for the switch from stuff to services. “We run an annual survey and one of the questions is: “What was your main motivation?” ‘Sustainability’ as an answer has increased about fourfold since we started the survey in 2019,” says Jacobs. But, like many services, The Restory doesn’t focus just on sustainability. Its messaging encompasses everything from convenience and skill to longevity. Whering exists to bring your Clueless dreams to life, while Loanhood is about promoting interesting new designers and saving and making money.

With inflation set to be the biggest challenge for fashion brands according to the 2023 State of Fashion report, fashion services are also poised to fill a low-budget (or no-budget) gap when buying is off the table. Shopping answers our desire for newness and not much else, while filling our physical space, our mental bandwidth and draining our bank accounts. Services, meanwhile, allow us to plan, create, renew, rethink, save space, save money and align our wardrobes with the climate. What’s not to like?

Images: Getty; courtesy of brands