Recently H&M have announced they are soon going to offer a rental service for clothing from their flagship store in Sergels Torg, Stockholm. The system, similar to brands such as Urban Outfitters, Banana Republic, Scotch and Soda and Anna Taylor Loft who have also made the change this year, works on a subscription where you can rent up to three pieces a time and with a cost of around 350 Swedish kronor per piece. Customers can book an appointment at the new rental space, speak with a stylist, who will help them select a range of pieces they can then rent for a week.
“We have looked at clothing rental for quite some time and are so happy to, for the first time, soon offer fashion fans the possibility to rent some stunning pieces from our Conscious Exclusive collections. We look forward to evaluating this as we are dedicated to change the way fashion is made and consumed today.”
- Pascal Brun, Head of Sustainability at H&M
The idea of clothing rental is to cut down on fast fashion and creating a circular fashion cycle with clothes being seen, rented, worn and washed again and again: cutting down on items that you wear once or occasionally and then chuck away.
However, having made such a push for this 'circular cycle', H&M are still a brand that creates and sells clothing at low cost, and have been criticised for their lack of sustainability. The scheme where you bring in a bag of old clothes to be recycled, in theory is a good one, but being rewarded by giving you a £5 voucher only encourages you to buy more, meaning the good you did by recycling clothes is just replaced with new ones.
Personally I'm yet to make up my mind about H&M's morals, are they doing it so they don't get called out for not doing it? Are they doing it to make a difference? Or are they doing it to cover the fact that as a brand they're almost supporting fast fashion.
What I do know is that creating a 'circular fashion cycle' is definitely a good start to tackling a global problem.
St.
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