Rent Jewellery | Welcome to the latest twist in fashion’s rental revolution

In late December, the Daily mail wrote about renting jewellery and the increase in Girl Meets Dress customers hiring their jewellery for events. Read the whole article below by journalist Gemma Champ.

Now you can borrow your bling … and it’s not too late to jewel up for New Year’s Eve!

• Fancy turning up to your Hogmanay bash dripping in diamonds or sapphires?  
• Now jewellery hire isn’t only for red-carpet-ready actresses or ‘aristocrats’
• The first luxury fashion rental website, thrived during the recession and since

“The biggest night of the year for partywear is upon us, and the shops are packed with sequinned, sparkly, frothy little delights.

And yet, who wants to brave the crowds out there only to find a dress that doesn’t fit nearly as well as that old favourite LBD already hanging in your wardrobe back at home? And aren’t we all supposed to be shopping less anyway?

The alternative to buying a brand-new frock is to wear the comfy old one and then pile on the accessories.

Of course, if you were a celebrity, you could pick up the phone to any of the Bond Street jewellers or designer stores and borrow some giant sparklers for the night.

Well, the good news is that, these days, jewellery hire isn’t only for the red-carpet-ready actress or the down-on-their-luck aristocrat.

We have grown used to the concept of designer dress rental — and now a number of companies are joining the long-established Bond Street jewellers Bentley & Skinner in offering gemstones for hire, too.

Fancy turning up to your Hogmanay bash dripping in diamonds or sapphires? It’s easier than you think.

‘Jewellery hire is really starting to take off,’ says Rachael Taylor of The Jewellery Cut, a website that covers jewellery trends.

‘People are realising just how wonderful it is to wear a one-off piece of real jewellery. It’s not the same as High Street jewellery.

‘You really feel like you’re a custodian of something unique for the night, something that so much craft and love has gone into.

‘These pieces are very special, but most of us can’t afford to buy them, so hiring is a great option.’

It’s the uniqueness that appeals to Agnes Cooper, a 36-year-old stay-at-home mum from Harpenden, Hertfordshire, who has previously rented jewellery from 4Element, an online firm that specialises in vintage costume jewellery hire.

She says: ‘If you wear a statement necklace, it’s just that — a statement. The next time you wear it, it’s not a statement any more. It loses a bit of allure every time, so it really makes sense to hire a piece.

‘I rented a beautiful, vintage YSL gold and crystal necklace which I wore to a wedding, and I received so many compliments. I could guarantee no one else was going to turn up in it!’

4Element founder Monika Wojtal spent 18 months collecting pieces of vintage and one-off designer jewellery before launching her company, and has lent pieces to celebrities and models as well as mere mortals.

Pixie Geldof, for example, borrowed a pair of spectacular YSL seashell earrings worth around £350, but available for hire for four days at just £45.

For Monika, renting out jewellery is about sharing the memories of an exquisite piece.

‘I regard the celebrities and my other customers, in towns all over the UK, as the same,’ she says. ‘One week a piece might be worn by an actress in Cannes, and the next for an anniversary party, say, in the Midlands.

‘Inside each box is a memory card of where it has been worn before, so the customer is part of a legacy. I love that. I think great fashion belongs to all of us, not only rich people.’

But it’s not just for those of us who can’t afford the big bucks of an outright purchase. Plenty of people who can afford to buy jewellery are renting instead, simply because it’s smarter to consider cost-per-wear.

Anna Bance founded Girl Meets Dress in 2009 after working on magazines and in PR, where she saw celebrities borrowing items regularly.

The first luxury fashion rental website, it thrived during the recession and continued to do well even in a more buoyant economy.

It just makes sense, she says, to share the cost of luxuries such as jewellery. ‘Women who love fashion but want to shop in a clever way have done the calculations and found they can get more for their money by paying for access to the things they want, when they want them, rather than paying the higher price of owning them,’ she says.

‘Many Girl Meets Dress members are high spenders at designer website Net-a-Porter or Harvey Nichols, with wardrobes full of expensive clothing.

‘Jewellery and accessories rental allows our customers to update their accessory wardrobes at their own pace, and change it based on their needs, whether for travel, business or a special occasion.’

But, for some shoppers, the idea of spending money and owning nothing in the end feels wrong — the experience of wearing the jewellery isn’t enough. Luckily, there are a number of solutions emerging, ranging from part-ownership to rent-then-buy.

For example, all of the jewellery at Susannah Lovis, in London’s Burlington Arcade, is available to hire and to buy. Because it’s vintage or antique, it doesn’t lose value from being worn.

So if you borrow a beautiful seven-string pearl necklace worth £1,700 and you fall in love with it, you can buy it afterwards.

This is one of the swankier jewellery shops in London, however, so the minimum charge for hire is £450.

At Bentley & Skinner, meanwhile, the hire price per day is 1 per cent of the whole retail price (with a minimum charge of £100 plus VAT), so long as you can muster a returnable deposit to cover that overall price tag.

That means you can borrow an early Victorian pearl and ruby cluster ring for £100 a day (plus VAT), but with a £2,150 deposit.

Or how about a Victorian floral pearl necklace with detachable star drop, dating from 1880, for the same £100-a-day cost, and a refundable deposit of £2,400?

Should you win the lottery, you may want to try a tiara for a day or two.

The cheapest one — a late-Victorian diamond-set piece worth £59,500 — would cost £595 plus VAT each day of hire, plus the small matter of a deposit of nearly £60,000. But, then, Bentley & Skinner is a class apart, having served the Royal Family since the Victorian era and loaned out the tiaras for Downton Abbey.

Of course, you’d be very well advised to insure that tiara — though some hire companies include insurance in the cost, so it’s worth checking beforehand.

At a rather more affordable level, The Folly Boutique, hosted on My Wardrobe HQ (the designer rental website Boris Johnson’s partner Carrie Symonds hired many clothes from on the run-up to the election) has a huge selection of contemporary jewellery to rent or buy, with the purchase price often well below the retail price.

You can hire a pair of fabulous Mawi Art Deco earrings from £46 for seven days, or buy them for £167.50, when the retail price would be £335.

If you find you are borrowing jewellery more often than you expected, a subscription might be what you’re looking for, says Rachael Taylor.

‘Covett is a co-ownership company, where you can buy into a piece of jewellery, a bit like a timeshare, and borrow the pieces for a certain number of days a year,’ she says.

‘Then you can sell or trade up. Or, for a subscription fee of about £120 a month, you can borrow other pieces.’ Items include signed jewels by Cartier or David Yurman, and exceptional gems worth tens of thousands of pounds.

For £1,200 a year, you can have access to one item a month for five consecutive days, and quarterly or bimonthly subscriptions are available, too. The pieces range from pretty diamond chandelier earrings, worth £4,500, to a stunning Picchiotti Burmese sapphire and diamond ring, worth £53,000.

There are plenty of less stonkingly expensive designer delights out there, too. So you really can save money — and space in your jewellery drawer — while keeping that Little Black Dress looking fresh, party after party.”