This month, you can give your wardrobe a temporary refresh with your favourite items from Toronto influencers’ closets. A new pop-up launched by Toronto-based peer-to-peer clothing rental app Rax — the first of its kind in Canada — is bringing fresh fashion finds that you can rent to Stackt Market all month long, sourced from the closets of a few local influencers.
“Shoppers can come in-store to browse around and try on items, and if they like it, they can rent it directly through the app,” Marley Alles, founder of Rax, says. Items can be rented for lengths of time specified by the seller, and they can also be booked in advance — meaning you can try on the ideal event dress now and have it reserved and ready to go for that summer wedding.
While anyone can rent out their wardrobe on Rax, the Stackt Market will feature items exclusively from Toronto influencers Chanelle Garrow, Kysa Bashir, TSN anchor Sarni Nicole Davis and Sasa Swim founder Sandra, as well as pieces from Alles and her sister’s closets.
Expect dresses from viral brands including Selkie, House of CB, Shona Joy, Astr the Label and For Love and Lemons. Sizes range from XS to 6X, and items can be rented for up to 80 per cent off.
Renting clothes is one of a few secondhand fashion trends that have taken off among younger buyers, along with clothing swaps, thrifting and vintage and consignment shopping. The trend of clothing rentals has only grown in popularity since the pandemic, with American fashion rental brand Nuuly reporting its first annual profit in 2024 after sales rose 60 per cent. Other rental companies, including Rent the Runway and Pickle, have seen jumps in revenue, buoyed particularly by gen Z and millennial shoppers.
Clothing rental platforms have primarily been used for event wear — often worn only once or twice, the cost-per-wear of a wedding guest dress can be prohibitively high. Instead, shoppers have turned to clothing rentals to score higher-quality dresses for cheap (on Rax, you can snag a $366 Norma Kamala dress for $70, or a $378 Reformation dress for $50).
It was her own experience buying outfits for events that inspired Alles to launch Rax. “All my friends are getting married, and I had a closet full of all of these expensive, really nice dresses,” she says. “I was using places like Poshmark to sell my clothes, but these were pieces I didn’t necessarily want to sell.”
And so Rax was born, offering a Canadian alternative to U.S.-based rental platforms. Since Alles is based in Toronto herself, many of the users on Rax are also based in the city — which has contributed to the community feel of the app.
“If you live in the same city, people often meet up instead of shipping the item, and I’ve heard stories of people making friends through the app,” she says.
Another big draw of a peer-to-peer platform is that shoppers can see photos of what the dress looks like on a real person, rather than a model. “We’re actually solving kind of another problem in the fashion industry, which is fit,” Alles says. “If you’re browsing an online store, you’re like, what does this look like in my size? Now you can see the item on an actual person.”
Rental platforms like Rax also offer a less expensive and more sustainable way to try out trends and refresh your wardrobe without necessarily contributing to more textile waste. “I bought metallic jeans and cheetah print jeans — definitely an impulse buy,” Alles laughs. “I could have rented that on the app for $20!”
The Rax pop-up will run until April 6 at unit 5-108 in Stackt Market, and the shop will be open from 12-8 p.m. every day.
