Owning nothing is now a luxury

Many young American urbanites have resigned themselves to a life of non-ownership, abandoning the dream of their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents before them, often out of financial necessity. But renting isn’t just a matter of necessity these days. It’s become almost posh.

While paying to borrow décor, clothing and offices is nothing new, the options have grown substantially in recent years. Now, one can fill a temporary home with rented coffee tables and sofas from Crate & Barrel and West Elm, and refresh a wardrobe with rented outfits from clothing lines like Theory and Vince or mall chains like Loft and Express. Some of those garments can even be returned to special drop boxes at WeWork, where their short-term wearers might also rent office space.

It doesn’t end there: Fancy camping tents, Vitamix blenders, Dyson vacuums and Oculus Rifts are all up for lease too. Some would say we’re living in the Gilded Age of renting.
 

“We were raised to save and invest and buy a home and do all of these things,” said Miki Reynolds, 38, who pays a monthly fee for much of what she uses in her day-to-day life in Los Angeles. “But my mentality to currently rent — it’s not YOLO. It’s more living in the present as much as planning for the future because I feel like nothing is guaranteed.”

Reynolds, the executive director of a nonprofit that provides resources like office access and mentoring to entrepreneurs, rents both her downtown apartment and her co-working space. She regularly swaps out high-end clothing and accessories through a subscription to Rent the Runway. She also pays a monthly fee to a furniture start-up called Fernish for a rental bed and floor lamp, as well as a borrowed coffee table and sofa. It’s easy and flexible to live this way, Reynolds said. The co-working space removes the administrative annoyances of running an office. She feels like she’s getting a deal on trendy furniture and clothing without being stuck with any of it. And she likes that she could pick up and move if she wanted, no moving trucks required.

The point of ownership, Reynolds said, is not to own at all, but rather “to experience the thing.”

It’s fitting that these options are resonating with a set of young, college-educated professionals roughly a decade after the Great Recession, which continues to shape notions of prosperity in the United States. Homeownership remains around a three-decade low for Americans in their 20s and 30s. That’s particularly evident in cities, where many can’t afford to buy. Yet some actually prefer the flexibility of renting as they explore jobs, neighbourhoods and relationships. The items that are being offered for temporary ownership to this cohort are a far cry from the Rent-A-Centres of the world, which target cash-strapped consumers who often lack access to credit. Fernish, for example, is geared toward young people whose design sense comes straight from Instagram, Pinterest and West Elm’s catalog. The company, founded in 2017, trades in imitation Eames shell chairs, midcentury-style wooden dressers and Art Deco-inspired bar carts, offering brands like Crate & Barrel and more boutique names like Campaign.

It’s a stark contrast to the retail therapy portrayed in the once-popular book and 2009 movie “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” in which the main character’s unhealthy yet entertaining obsession with expensive clothes, bags and stilettos drove her into a mountain of debt. “We used to display wealth via what we purchased and there were a lot of kind of pop culture signifiers of displaying wealth,” said Jennifer Hyman, Rent the Runway’s chief executive. “The recession accelerated it, but I think there’s a value that’s been placed on intelligence and being smart about how you spend your money and that has also coincided with the rise of the sharing economy.”

Rent the Runway, which announced a $1 billion valuation in March, began in 2009 as a rental service for high-end formal dresses and has since introduced subscriptions for everyday wardrobe items. The company expanded into children’s clothing this year and plans to introduce pillows and throws from West Elm this summer.

©2019 The New York Times News Service