Renting A Life

Designer wear, designer bags, furniture or art, rentals afford you a lifestyle you always wanted but couldn’t afford

- Prachi Bhuchar

The tiny room in Delhi’s Okhla area opens out to reveal clothes racks laden with glittering garments. Glittering, because ahead of the festival season, everyone wants to wear their jewels on their sleeves and look their best in designer wear. And if you can do that without worrying about your shifting size and at a fifth of the cost of the outfit, why not? In an adjacent room, a team is hard at work, checking, folding and placing garments that need to be shipped out into black boxes lined with white tissue paper. This is the office of Stage3, an online fashion rental company founded by Sabena Puri, a Harvard Business School graduate, designer Rina Dhaka and entrepreneur Sanchit Baweja in 2016. Here, for as little as Rs 1,500, you can rent a designer outfit, be it by Gauri & Nainika or Sabyasachi, be the toast of the party and slip back into your jeans once the event is done and dusted.