• Australian fashion rental startup Glamcorner has signed a partnership with cult Byron Bay-based fashion brand Spell.
• The fashion rental market was one of the few major fashion success stories of the pandemic, and is worth $2 million globally.
• “This partnership is setting an industry benchmark on the commitment that we should be making to sustainability,” said Glamcorner cofounder Audrey Khaing-Jones in a statement.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Australian fashion rental startup Glamcorner has signed a partnership with cult Byron Bay-based fashion brand Spell, in a move that signals readiness in the Australian market to tap into the $2 billion fashion rental market.

Glamcorner, founded in 2012 in Sydney by Dean Jones and Audrey Khaing-Jones is one of the few rental platforms available for Australian consumers.

The average Australian only wears 40% of their wardrobe and 6000kg of clothes are dumped in landfill every 10 minutes in Australia.

The platform allows shoppers to rent clothing on a subscription or one-time basis, with the Spell partnership offering a rental collection from new and previous season collections of the cult Australian brand, which has a global following driven by its following of 1 million on Instagram.

Audrey Khaing Jones, co-founder and COO of GlamCorner, said partnering with more Australian designers is part of the brand’s strategy to increase subscriptions and help established brands who may be interested in entering the circular economy get started.

The brand chose to work with Spell, she said, because they were “taking their impact and sustainability journey seriously.”

“We’re proud to partner with a brand that is aligned with our vision to drive this generational change in fast fashion consumption and waste,” she said in a statement announcing the partnership.

The brand began its partnerships program last year with department store David Jones, but Khang Jones described the partnership with an independent fashion brand as “a huge milestone.”

“This partnership is setting an industry benchmark on the commitment that we should be making to sustainability,” she said.

Customers will be able to rent items and have them shipped across Australia, with rental periods running for four to eight days, a standard for the rental platform market.

Fashion rental market grows, despite pandemic

Demand for fashion rentals was kickstarted by the runaway success of US startup Rent the Runway, which was founded in 2009, and is now valued at US $1 billion.

Since the company proved – in the same way Net-a-Porter was a trailblazer for fashion e-commerce – that women were willing to rent and return designer clothes, the industry has grown globally, with rental companies proving to be one of the rare success stories of the pandemic.

Along with Rent the Runway, UK platforms By Rotation and My Wardrobe HQ also reported growth in 2020.

The global online clothing rental market reached a value of US$ 1.26 billion in 2019, and is expected to grow by 8.7% by 2025.

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.