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Rent The Runway Debuts ‘Affordable’ Subscription — For $89 A Month

Co-founders Jenn Hyman and Jenny Fleiss attend the Rent the Runway DC store Opening at Rent The Runway on November 24, 2014 in Washington, DC. Image by Kris Connor/Getty Images for Rent The Runway

By Michelle Honig October 16, 2017

Renting designer clothes just got cheaper.

According to CNBC, Rent The Runway will be debuting “RTR Update,” which is a cheaper membership alternative that allows customers to rent four pieces from the site every month for only $89 a month. RTR Update includes free shipping, returns, dry cleaning and insurance.

Their current membership option, RTR Unlimited, will get a price increase from $139 to $159 a month. It includes unlimited rentals throughout the month.

Co-founders Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, who are both Jewish, believe that the success of their “Unlimited” subscription service proves that “the future is ‘closetless,’” Hyman told CNBC. Rent The Runway’s brick-and-mortar locations — in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Woodland Hills, California — have “turned into extensions of our customers’ own closets,” Hyman told CNBC, with RTR Unlimited customers visiting the stores up to twice a day to change up their look as they transition from work-wear to date night.

Facade of Rent the Runway’s NYC brick-and-mortar location. Image by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

This model of a “closetless” future is not only efficient, it also helps promote sustainability in fashion — which, as climate change proves to be more dire, will become increasingly important in the coming years.

In that vein, today Rent the Runway unveiled its first nationally broadcast commercial, which discusses “what women will do with their closets once they start renting the runway.”

Because, as Hyman explained to CNBC, Rent the Runway believes that the idea of the closet is evolving: “We…don’t think it’s going to exist in the future.”

Michelle Honig is a writer at the Forward. Contact her at [email protected]. Find her on Instagram and Twitter.

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