
Rent the Runway Wants to Lend You Your Look - alienreborn
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/rent-the-runway-wants-to-lend-you-your-look
======
wdewind
The suit is back!

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

This time it's rentable.

~~~
CPLX
Literally every fucking time there's an article in the press someone posts
this stupid Paul Graham article as if it's an original or clever contribution
to the discussion.

Yes, that last sentence was a bit harsh, but stay with me. Constantly saying
"Hey guys, PR exists" except in code is one of those weird HN tics that drives
me crazy. Allow me to elaborate.

1) The concept of public relations is not novel or unheard of. Like at all. PR
companies have thousands of employees, are traded on public stock markets, and
so on. It's an often sophisticated and well established professional
discipline. I personally am aware of it because I spent 10 years as an
executive at a PR firm, so I feel some ability to speak on the subject.

Pointing out that PR exists is like noticing there's a bright shining light in
the sky half of the time, it's completely devoid of insight. Of course when
companies are mentioned favorably in the press it's likely that PR was
involved. That's literally intrinsic to the concept of companies being in the
press. The details of how that works might be interesting, but...

2) Even within that context the linked article is facile at best. It's pretty
long but it's clearly written by someone who doesn't really have all that much
exposure to or understanding of how journalism or PR works on a day to day
basis. Or didn't at the time at least. He's a great writer, I loved his book,
and this works just fine as a personal anecdote, but not as a canonical
comment for decades on dozens of business stories.

3) And lastly, literally nobody on the planet calls a pitched press profile
story a "submarine" ever, like it's thirteen years later, it didn't catch on.

Stop trying to make submarine happen. It's not going to happen.

I'll show myself out.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> _The concept of public relations is not novel or unheard of. Like at all.
> ... Pointing out that PR exists is like noticing there 's a bright shining
> light in the sky half of the time, it's completely devoid of insight._

Many, many people have heard of PR but still believe that articles like this
are written by independent, unbiased investigative journalists. The piece
starts off with "At the back of my New York closet", giving you the idea that
the whole thing is by Alexandra, from Alexandra's point of view, all the way
to "For now, I’m happy to pretend that they’re mine."

If the public could see the degree to which this experience and the words and
research in this piece was spoon-fed to the author by Rent The Runway Inc,
(what does that email chain actually look like?) it would be like telling them
that the bright shining light in the sky the other half of the time was not a
moon but a space station - absolutely mind-blowing.

> _I personally am aware of it because I spent 10 years as an executive at a
> PR firm, so I feel some ability to speak on the subject._

While I appreciate your insight and would value further information on the PR
industry, this disqualifies your opinion that the business you were in is not
surprising.

~~~
CPLX
I mean, it's not like that take is wrong. Articles like this actually are
written by (relatively) unbiased journalists. It's not an investigative piece
so that word wouldn't apply.

It's the New Yorker, it's a very credible source that practices real
journalism. Some outlets don't as much. But these guys have very strict ethics
and fact checking requirements.

True, a publicist almost certainly emailed the writers and editors a million
times asking for a profile but _so did literally every other company_ in the
world, so it's not really all that dispositive.

But either way, the point is _every_ story that involves access to a person or
company is to some extent managed by that person or company. Sometimes the
outlet comes up with the idea, often it's pitched. But it doesn't really
matter all that much which. It's up to the outlet to decide how much work they
do, how oppositional they are, and what their voice is in the story. It’s up
to the person/company to decide if they want to participate and how.

Yes, in the abstract that process is sort of interesting. But its mere
existence is not news.

Imagine if a fellow HN poster came along in every thread and was like "HEY
GUYS DID YOU KNOW RENT THE RUNWAY PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN OWN THE COMPUTERS THE
WEBSITE IS ON, THERE'S A THING CALLED CLOUD COMPUTING!! HERE'S A LINK TO A
BLOG POST BY A POETRY PROFESSOR WHO WAS SURPRISED TO LEARN THIS FACT" for
thirteen years, you might say, well sure, while this particular example could
be an exception as you are offering up no knowledge of this actual website's
server setup, in general for a company like this that's often true, and sure,
actually yes, this concept of cloud computing is certainly interesting.

But...

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uxp100
It's $159 a month. It says that in the middle of the article, but you can
decide how much you want to read once you know that.

------
throwaway080383
I don't know about the subscriptions, but my significant other uses RTR one-
offs for company parties and is a pretty satisfied customer.

------
bearcobra
I'd love to see a similar service aimed at men. I've found myself trying to
purchase fewer, more expensive (and hopefully more durable) items. Similarly
to the anecdote from the article, I find myself buying stuff that's fine in
store but ultimately isn't something I'd like to keep and the return policy
makes it just difficult enough that I just keep or donate it.

~~~
jsjohnst
> I'd love to see a similar service aimed at men.

Me too! I’ve looked and not found anything comparable.

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317070
Does someone know something similar for men in London? I'd be interested in
this too! In the article, it sounds like it exists, but then Im not aware of
it.

~~~
jsjohnst
To my knowledge, nothing equivalent exists for men anywhere. Wish it did!

~~~
dragonwriter
There are broadly similar services for men, e.g., The Mr. Collection [0]

[0]
[https://www.themrcollection.com/collections](https://www.themrcollection.com/collections)

~~~
jsjohnst
From their site:

> When You sign up for our service, You agree that each pack will be a
> surprise.

The big difference is they pick what you are sent, rather than you deciding.
Going through their signup questionnaire on their site, they literally do not
have enough information to know what I will or won't like. It's hard to even
see what exactly is in their inventory to know if what they have is even in
the right ballpark. Furthermore, they also don't have stores in major cities
so going and swapping on demand isn't an option. As I am not a customer, I
can't say for sure, but it sounds (from reading their site) like it is roughly
a week between you shipping something back and getting your next shipment,
especially for someone on the East coast (they seem to be LA based), so it's
purely a way to augment your clothing once in a while, not what RtR is trying
to accomplish for women.

End result, broadly speaking I guess somewhat similar, but not what I’m
looking for personally.

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dfee
It’s a 9 year old company (that’s raised close to a half billion dollars), and
this is just a PR article.

Why is an account that hasn’t posted in 7 years posting this?

~~~
dang
> Why is an account that hasn’t posted in 7 years posting this?

This breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing without
evidence. Please don't do that here—it poisons the well.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
ynniv
I found this headline to be strongly garden path. Didn't we used to quote
proper nouns when they didn't appear to be nouns? "Rent the Runway"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-
path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It's a title and initial caps is a style used for titles. Most people are too
lazy to do it nowadays given the amount of titling we need to do for our
electronic communications but there is assuredly still some crusty style
manual out there advocating it. The New Yorker notably clings to its
traditions.

------
justtopost
Reminds me of idocracy. Just wait till the subsidized free version launches.
Seems so odd to value vanity over familiarty personally. Do people not have a
'favorite pair of jeans' anymore? Does breaking-in a garmet not still have the
same joy and personal touch? Color me skeptical of widespread adoption. Seems
more like a new york kinda thing.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
It's possible to have a favorite pair of jeans and also rent clothes from this
place.

