Dressed to the Max in Their Borrowed Best
What if someone gave a party and every woman came in a rented dress? Something like a drop-dead $10,000 Bob Mackie on loan for $350? Or a sexy-to-the-max $2,000 Vicky Tiel temporarily on the town for $180?
It could happen. At Dressed to Kill in West Hollywood, a rent-a-gown boutique that opened last October, owner Rebecca Walls estimates she has 300 high-ticket party dresses ready to go.
She has already sent a number of women off in borrowed finery to the Bush-Quayle Inaugural Ball. Her loaners, which include evening bags, shoes, hair ornaments and jewelry, have also been to the altar, the Academy Awards, Texas and New York galas, local proms, a beauty pageant and at least one romantic dinner for two.
Charity Event
One client re-rented an Oleg Cassini silk-chiffon slip dress with a beaded tunic that she had worn to a charity event in Orange County. “Her husband liked her in it so much, he asked her to rent it again for a romantic evening together,” Walls explains.
Theoretically, the store is open Tuesday through Saturday by appointment only--but there are a number of exceptions, including “someone who wants to drop by and see what we’re all about,” says Walls. Other exceptions are desperate out-of-towners. “Sometimes hotel concierges call with last-minute requests.”
Standard rental time is 24 hours, prices range from $50 to $350, and every garment is cleaned before it circulates again. Walls expects popular items, such as a red, silk-chiffon cocktail dress that has hit weddings, bar mitzvahs, the Grammy Awards and the Inaugural Ball, will have to retire after six months of service.
Several Sources
Her merchandise comes from a number of sources, including designer showrooms for new items and film shoots for “used” dresses--some worn as few as four hours, Walls says. Clients range from high school girls to society matrons, and saving money is not the only reason a woman will turn up looking for a loaner.
“The more sophisticated pieces are selected by women who could afford to buy, but choose to rent,” Walls claims. For one customer, the choice was made “after her husband freaked because he had paid thousands of dollars for her dress and there was another woman in the same dress at the event. The next time she rented.”
Walls and a friend hit on the idea of haute couture on loan at the Cannes Film Festival last year, “when we overheard some women say they had rented their gowns from a store called One Night Stand in London.”
Recently, Cosmopolitan magazine linked the New York branch of One Night Stand and L.A.’s Dressed to Kill in a smart-move-of-the-month suggestion. Earlier this week, a girl came in hoping to find the flowered strapless dress available in New York for $150 a night. Walls didn’t have the identical item, but she had something very close--for $75.
Married to an independent film producer, whose name she prefers to keep out of print, the tall, strawberry blond is a new mother and a partner in a real estate firm that buys and restores historical landmarks. She hardly needed something to do, she says with a bright smile, but “I needed something to wear. I’m the best example of my customer. We’re very active women who aren’t interested in buying clothes that basically we can only wear once.”
