Designer is a Girl's Best Friend! [Rent the Runway]

I think most girls fawn over designer dresses at one point or another. There's just something about the shimmer! The feel! The $700 price tag?!  I hate thumbing through the pages of Lucky or Vogue and falling in love with fabulous frocks, only to snap back to the reality that I'm just not quite Lucky enough to be En Vogue.

Unfortunately, as a young professional, my eyes are often bigger than my pocketbook. Isn't life just so unfair?

As I once pleaded with explained to my mother during a pre-prom-night discussion, something about the right dress just changes everything!

 What girl doesn't die for the perfect birthday party dress?



Betsey Johnson's "Evening Gumdrop"
For some reason, I always want to look like a cupcake on my b-day.



 Don't you sometimes just need a dress that makes you feel unstoppable for a girls' night out on the town, like this one by Nicole Miller, aptly named "Make Him Regret It"?

One of my girlfriends just introduced me to a way you can avoid dreaded impulse-debt a'la The Girl in the Green Scarf, and refrain from the shameful act of "keeping the price tags on."

Rent the Runway was created by two fashion-forward Harvard business students with the same affinity for the finer things in style, and the same modest budget as myself. On the website, you can essentially rent designer dresses and accessories for as low as $50 for four days.  It's like having access to your more fashionable, more affluent older sister's closet, without the guilt trips! 

Not only does RTR send you a postage-paid return envelope for your dress, they also send you a back-up size for free, just in case the fit looked different online. Every dress is dry-cleaned between each customer, and is released from the lineup as soon as it shows signs of wear. If you're clumsy cautious like me, you can also purchase a $5 insurance against any rips, tears, or stains.

It is probably more practical to hop over to TJ-Maxx before you hit the club, but I think RTR would be ideal for weddings, work engagements, charity functions, or other special occassions when you want to step up from clearance rack chic.