Rent the Runway means you can always wear something new. Should you have to?

The Washington Post:

The main entrance to the new Rent the Runway boutique, which opened just in time for New Year’s Eve celebrations, faces M Street NW in the middle of old Establishment Georgetown. Despite the high-tech, data-driven, proudly disruptive business model of the company, which was founded on the premise that it makes more sense for a woman to rent her special-occasion clothes than buy them, the store recalls those intimate, personal shopping salons of yore that were filled with slimming mirrors, makeup tables and discerning saleswomen ready to cast a sober eye on the emotional process of getting dressed.

On the one hand, Rent the Runway believes the future of shopping will be based on a noncommittal, virtual experience in which clothes pass through our lives like so many generic Zipcars. But on the other, the company is well aware that shoppers remain haunted by old-fashioned insecurities, a paralysis of plenty and a fear of the unknown. And so Rent the Runway has provided its customers with the equivalent of a bricks-and-mortar security blanket.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post