Designer Handbags: Why Buy When You Can Rent?

During New York fashion week, the city's extensive cool crowd has only one thing on its mind: how to blag its way into the shows. It's fine if you are Sophia Coppola or Kanye West, who have been swept into front row seats this week.

But what if you are a celebrity-bypass? Rule No 1 is to ensure you carry the accessories of the designer in question, in particular a handbag. But there's a problem here, too. What if you are a ticketless celebrity-bypass who can't afford $1,350 (£720) for one of Marc Jacobs' Swagger Quilted Totes (with knotted top handles in bark-coloured leather)?

Even in the secular world of American fashion, miracles can happen. Two website companies are offering couture accessories to the chic masses at affordable prices. In short: handbags for rent.

Instead of paying $2,300 for a Jimmy Choo embroidered leather bag you can have it (albeit for just a week) for $189.95. You hire it from a Minnesota-based internet firm, frombagstoriches.com

The company, which is in discussions with potential partners in London to set up a UK branch, supplies designer brands that include Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chloé and Burberry. It has about 2,300 women on its books, most aged 25 to 35. They live mainly in New York and Los Angeles, though there is steady demand from Dallas and Houston in Texas. "A lot of southern women are very into top-of-the range fashion," said a founder of the business, Kara Richter.

The glamour and ostentatious wealth of the fashion world may sit uneasily with renting, which is why frombagstoriches has "initiated the development of an appropriate lexicon". Instead of the verb "to rent" it prefers to speak in terms of "incremental-product ownership".

In Seattle a rival web company, bagborroworsteal.com, is also encouraging the incremental ownership of top-of-the-range handbags. It does so, however, through a membership scheme. Customers pay a set fee each month and can then borrow up to three bags at any time from within the various price ranges.

Prices rise from $15 a month for brands such as Coach and DKNY to $175 for Chloé, Prada and Gucci.

"Why should celebrities, fashion editors and socialites be the only ones allowed to borrow fashion accessories?" the company's mission statement proclaims. "Why not give everyone access to the perfect accoutrement for every occasion?"

That may sound like the fashion world's equivalent of collective farming, but it appears to be working.

At PurseBlog.com - which bills itself as the site for "handbag enthusiasts to manifest their shallow obsessions" - the verdict is two thumbs up. "Although we all want to be like the famous quad from Sex and the City, face it girls, we can't always have a different bag for a different day, attitude, outfit and occasion."

But the site's users are divided. "I think this is a great idea," writes Cheyanne Williams. "I know for a fact that my husband will like this programme, too. This way he can save the hundreds of dollars that I spend when I see something new."

But Suellen Zimet disagrees: "I like to keep what I love. Even if I lose interest, I don't think I would want to return it."

Three of the best


Designer Chloé

Model Tracy Pocket Tote

Description A chocolate calfskin bag in the Tracy style, made in Italy. Zip top with brass hardware

Retails for $1,660 (£885)

Yours for $80 a week

Designer Marc Jacobs

Model Large Denim Hobo

Description Contrast-stitched quilting, with angled zipped pockets and tan leather trim

Retails for $925

Yours for $60 a week

Designer Gucci

Model Britt Medium Shoulder Bag

Description Silvery gunmetal leather with a tasselled strap and signature Gucci logo on the flap

Retails for $1,750

Yours for $95 a week