Written by Gina Tonic

Fashion isn’t a one-size-fits-all industry; so why is there such a gaping hole in the size inclusivity offered by clothing rental platforms? 

As sustainability has grown more and more important to the average shopper, solutions to solving our desire for fresh fits without damaging the planet have sprung up everywhere. The most successful is arguably the fashion rental market, which has been estimated as worth almost £1 billion globally and has been forecasted to grow globally by 10% each year for at least the next five years.

As well as providing an eco option for fashion lovers, clothing rental also offers customers the chance to wear clothing they may not be able to afford to buy outright – we are in the midst of soaring inflation and on the brink of a potential recession, after all. Providing luxury to those who otherwise cannot access it is one of the many reasons that fashion rental is thriving in the UK.  

Yet, as is always the issue with anything clothing-related, there is one group of people noticeably left out of this new fashion frontier – plus-size people. Leaders in the rental industry, Hurr, By Rotation and Rotaro, all offer differing degrees of plus-size options (Hurr up to a size 32, By Rotation up to a 26 and Rotaro falling slightly behind with a highest size of 20.) But after filtering these size options on each of the brand’s sites, only a handful of size-inclusive options are available in bigger sizing – a stark figure compared to the hundreds of thousands of garments available for ‘straight-size’ shoppers. For potential renters that are a size 20 or over, Hurr has 8 potential options; Rotaro has 4 and By Rotation has 104; a mere fraction of the rental market as a whole.

Of course, Rotaro has a different business model to Hurr and By Rotation. While both Hurr and By Rotation work on a peer-to-peer rental basis, meaning that the clothing being rented is owned by individuals and sent out to other individuals to borrow, Rotaro owns all of the clothing it stocks, which means customers rent directly from the company. 

It’s this reason precisely that Georgie Hyatt, the co-founder and CEO of Rotaro, explains when stating that it is often down to the brands they work with not stocking bigger sizes. “Emerging luxury brands don’t offer sizes upwards of 16 in most cases as they are restricted by budget and production, so because we work with brands on consignment, we are restricted to the sizes they have available to us at the time,” she says.

Still, Hurr and By Rotation have proven that there are luxury brands offering plus sizes and even the most basic of Google searches pulls up brands that offer a wider size range. Hyatt adds that Rotaro is “working closer with our brand partners by forward ordering to be more size inclusive” and that the brand is working with brands including Ganni and Rixo to offer sizing up to a UK 22, which will launch next spring. 

Peer-to-peer rental app By Rotation’s founder Eshita Kabra-Davies also places the blame with brands for their lack of size inclusivity. “The brands that are the most popular on By Rotation are mid-to-high-end and unfortunately there is often limited sizing in those brands. Victoria Beckham’s newly launched ‘extended sizing’ is a prime example, as it only goes up to size 18,” she laments. “With this in mind, plus-size rotators are limited in terms of what they can upload as there aren’t a huge amount of quality brands serving this community.”

Kabra-Davies adds that as well as encouraging brands to extend their size offerings, By Rotation also has an ambassador programme that actively “seeks out diverse users from plus-size to petite to reach a wider community”. The brand also utilises its social media and marketing to encourage sign-ups from all kinds of body types, shapes and wardrobes in order to hopefully stock a wider range of clothing for its users.  

By not only representing plus-size people, but actively working with influencers from this community to show what is achievable if more lenders sign up to their platform, By Rotation is ensuring its inclusivity is actually actioned and not simply lip service. The sad reality is that among a crop of recently-launched rental platforms, only a couple actually provide potential renting options for people of a certain size – and that’s the antithesis of inclusive, whatever a brand’s messaging might be.

Due to the nature of fashion rental being a lending service and not creating any new garments, the blame for the exclusion of plus-size people lands, in part, at the feet of the brands not producing luxury items in larger sizes. As usual, fatphobia is not only ascribed to a specific industry like fashion rental, but is a part of a systematic refusal to cater to bigger bodies.  

Images: courtesy of brands

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