Rental glamour

In this Q&A, Wharton Professor of Marketing Cait Lamberton discusses the psychological pros and cons of rental clothing, which is disrupting the retail fashion industry.

Services such as Rent the Runway provide access to different outfits every month. Lamberton believes the popularity of such services may be driven by the ubiquity of cameras and the corresponding popularity of social media. (You don’t want to be seen in the same outfit in every photo on Instagram.)

Lamberton describes the effect of renting vs. buying clothing in various ways:

• Ownership provides a sense of control. Renting provides a sense of exploration because you are essentially wearing the clothing that you aspire to

• That kind of aspiration may not be psychologically healthy, because it can be a constant reminder that you can’t afford to buy these clothes for yourself

• Men seem to embrace the rental clothing concept less eagerly than women because men tend to value the control that comes with ownership

• Women seem to enjoy the sense of community that comes with renting – for example Rent the Runway lets you easily form an online community with the dozens of other people who may have worn the same dress.

• This trend does not mean the death of traditional retail fashion. Online shopping and brick-and-mortar stores still offer an experience that many consumers cherish.

• Will rental clothing spiral out of control? Is it psychologically healthy for someone to wear 365 different outfits in a year?

Is there something weird, also, about the “contagion” effect of wearing other people’s clothes on a routine basis? This Q&A reminds me of a study that suggested people refused to wear a sweater that purportedly belonged to a serial killer because of the “contamination” that could occur, as if his serial-killerness could be passed along through his clothing. On the other hand, people were eager to hold a fountain pen that supposedly belonged to Albert Einstein, possibly because believed his genius could be metaphorically “passed along” by touching something he touched.