Our closets are potentially hiding an income stream worth thousands

When she bought an “obscenely expensive” Zimmermann dress from the Australian brand’s 2020 collection, Courtney Fitzsimmons knew she’d been “irresponsible”.

“I wore it to dinner and thought, ‘Oh gosh’. The high came off, I’d spent thousands on a dress I will rarely wear,” the 32-year-old CEO of a finance company says. “I’m a single mum of four kids – that [dress] could have paid half a term of school fees. I couldn’t return it, and I loved it too much to resell it.”

So, like a growing number of regular fashion lovers, Fitzsimmons, who runs a finance company, decided to rent the $3000 dress on peer-to-peer platform The Volte. Within three weeks of listing the dress, at $325 a pop, she’d made back her money.

Less than a year after her first rental, Fitzsimmons’ collection had grown from 10 dresses to more than 300, including a $695 current-season Alemais dress that has already made $3000. She has also hired an assistant to handle admin and ensure dresses are cleaned and checked before being sent to their next destination.

By now, Fitzsimmons is used to the obvious questions: how often do the dresses come back damaged? And isn’t it gross having other people wear your clothes?

To answer the first, not often. Fitzsimmons estimates a tiny number of returns require specialist cleaning or alterations to fix accidents such as a stiletto heel piercing a hem. Most rental platforms also offer borrowers insurance for as little as $5, a benefit over rentals conducted on Instagram of Facebook. And the second? “There’s an amount of pride [involved]. None of us want to send back a dress that makes us look like a slob,” she says.

As the spring racing carnival and wedding seasons combine to create a post-pandemic events boom, operators such as The Volte are hoping to add to their slice of the rental market, which is predicted to grow to $US7 billion ($11.08 billion) by 2025, according to research by Statista.

Although “traditional” rental platforms such as GlamCorner have been around for more than 10 years, peer-to-peer rentals are growing rapidly, especially now brands are getting behind rentals.