Ep 1: Is fashion rental the answer?

Episode 1 of The Impact Fashion Podcast covers fashion rental. The episode features Jennifer Ong, regional lead for Style Theory, a fashion subscription rental company headquartered in Singapore.

The full question for this episode was actually, “Is fashion rental the answer to the industry’s environmental issues?”.

During the episode we talked about:

  • Building a rental company in Asia
  • The effects of the pandemic on fashion rental and how the company is pivoting into resale as a result
  • The economic benefits of adopting sustainability and the green washing phenomenon that is occurring as a result
  • The potential that subscription based businesses have

…because there is so much money to be made from having a sustainable label on your brand everyone is trying to do it.

Resources referenced in the episode

During our interview Jennifer makes reference to a book called Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future – And What to Do about It by Tien Tzuo and Gabe Weisert.

We also talked about WRAP’s Valuing our Clothes research which found that UK adults only wear 44 percent of the clothes they own.


Interesting articles/videos on the topic from around the interweb:

  • Rethinking Rental in a Crisis via BOF
  • The rise of fashion rental via The Guardian
  • The end of ownership for fashion products via McKinsey
  • Rent-a-porter: would you hire your wardrobe? via FT

Thank you for joining Impact Fashion. We’ll have new episodes released on Fridays. If you listen and enjoy it, I’d love it if you could share with friends and colleagues across social media. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts if you fancy it.