Look, I know people always say, “School isn’t a fashion show!” But you know what? I can’t help it that I love clothes and enjoy showing up looking my best. Unfortunately, though, looking your best can sometimes translate to spending a ton of money. If your wallet has ever felt personally victimized by your taste in designer brands, please know you’re not alone. But what if there was a student-friendly way to get jaw-dropping outfits, without jaw-dropping prices?
Enter: Bipty, a fashion rental app that empowers users to dress for success, for less. Unlike other clothing-rental apps, Bipty acts as a closet-sharing community, where real people offer up pieces they own for others to rent, for a fraction of what it would cost to buy them new (while also giving the clothing owners a way to earn some extra money). It’s like borrowing clothes from your friends or roommates, except you can access closets all over the country.
If this sounds like an app built specifically for college students, that’s because it kind of is: Bipty’s CEO Natalia Ohanesian first got the idea for the company when she was in college.
“[Bipty] came out of a personal struggle,” Ohanesian tells Her Campus in an exclusive interview. “I was spending a lot of money on clothes that I was only wearing once and I felt like it was very wasteful.” After years of always buying new fashions (and lending her clothes out to her two sisters and friends), it clicked. “One day, one of my roommates was borrowing a dress for me for Valentine’s Date, and it just kind of hit me, like, ‘Why isn’t there a way for all of us to borrow clothes from each other, on a very large and organized scale?’”
Ohanesian decided to post some photos of her clothes onto Instagram and offering them up for rental — and it worked! “We had our first rental within literally 30 seconds [and] that’s how it started,” she says. “It just grew very organically.” From there, she entered her business idea into her school’s Venture Vetting Pitch competition, where out of 300 students, Bipty was selected as one of three finalists and won $3,000 in seed funding.
Now, Bipty is available across the country, with over 5,000 app users — known as “besties” — in the Bipty community. Ohanesian is excited to see what is in store regarding the future of her fashion rental company. “I would love for Bipty to be on everybody’s phone the way Uber is,” she says, envisioning the company growing to the point that users will be able to select an item to rent and have it arrive at their doorsteps in minutes.
Ohanesian is proud of how many problems Bipty is built to solve. “You don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for a dress you’re only going to wear once,” she says, giving an example: “We have this one dress from a brand called Cleo Pep. It’s over $2,000, but you can rent it for $150 to $200, depending on [how long you keep it], so that’s less than 10% of the retail value.”
Not only does Bipty help borrowers save money (while also helping lenders make money), but it could also be an alternative to fast fashion that many Gen Zers are looking for. “At the end of the day, fast fashion is pretty harmful for our environment and it doesn’t really work,” Ohanesian says. “So I think [peer-to-peer fashion borrowing] is a great option as it’s sustainable and empowers other women financially.”And Ohanesian isn’t just Bipty’s CEO; she’s also a Bipty “bestie” herself. To this day, she remembers a dress she rented from Bipty for her sister’s wedding weekend: “It’s from this brand called Cult Gaia. It’s a very expensive dress that I got for a fraction of the price. And I just felt like a million dollars.”