Clothing Subscription Services Offer High Fashion Variety, Flexibility
Clothing subscription services offer shoppers variety and flexibility.
— -- It’s often said that you should dress for the job you want and not for the one you have.
For those who want to put that into practice, price can be prohibitive – especially for high fashion garments. Enter Sarah LaFleur, the CEO of MM.LaFleur, an online women’s clothing boutique that sells stylish work clothes for about $150 to $300 per item.
“My dream was really to be able to sell clothes that could cost $1,500 at a department store at a fraction of the price,” LaFleur told “Good Morning America.”
LaFleur’s enterprise works like this: Users fill out a quick survey, and a stylist will hand-pick clothes for that user. Shipping – including for returns – is free, and the shopper only pays for the clothes that she keeps.
“We call it our bento model where what you ultimately get is a box which looks like a bento, much like a Japanese lunch,” said MM.LaFleur’s co-founder, Narie Foster.
Dresses, separates and accessories -- including belts and jewelry – are among the items available from MM.LaFleur.
The service is part of a trend of fashion houses going online.
“Until recently you had to be rich or famous to have your own stylist, but we are seeing now that the masses can have their own stylists through these businesses,” Ashley Lutz, retail editor with Business Insider, told “GMA.”
Le Tote is another company that’s part of the growing clothing subscription trend. Users get a selection – or “tote” – of clothes that they can wear and return for a new shipment of clothes as often as they want. It costs $50 a month.
“We found that women only use about 20 percent of their closet,” Brett Northart, Le Tote’s founder, said. “We want to be that 80 percent. We want to give you access to all those items you're not sure you want to commit to.”
Lisa Raphael uses Le Tote.
Asked whether she believed she was no longer impulse shopping and therefore saving money, she replied: “I do think that I am saving money by doing a, sort of, clothing subscription because I'm actually trying out the clothing, I'm not like ‘oh, that's cute’ and wearing it once maybe.”