Don’t Buy, Rent - Why H&M Is Hiring Out Fashion

Fast fashion relies on rapid turnover and few retailers have done as much to encourage the adoption of fast fashion as H&M. This week, the Swedish retailer unveils a new concept in its flagship store in Stockholm. Only it isn’t selling clothes—it’s renting them.

H&M, whose brands include Cos, & Other Stories and Weekday, is introducing a limited collection of some 50 selected party dresses and skirts from H&M’s 2012-2019 Conscious Exclusive collections, made from “more” sustainable materials, as well as a small number from this year’s collection. Customers will book an appointment with an atelier who will help them select up to three pieces a week, for around 350 SEK ($36) for each item. Once the garment is returned, it’s dry-cleaned. A repair and remake counter will also be open for damaged fashion favorites.

This is in part a recognition of growing customer concerns about the fashion industry’s impact on the environment. “Fashion is about lust and impulses,” admits Anna Gedda, head of sustainability at the H&M Group. “By 2030 there will be 8.5 billion of us. We will need two planets—but that doesn’t mean we will all be naked, so the question is how do we make that possible? At the end of the day, we have to change how we enjoy and use fashion.”

Waste Not, Want Not

The trouble is that some fashion is more wasteful than others. It has been estimated that more than half of fast fashion—where new styles are introduced several times a year —is disposed of within a year. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the fashion industry has doubled production over the 15 years to 2017 to meet demand, yet the amount of time we spend wearing those clothes has fallen by 40%.

Although the amount of clothes collected for recycling has increased, the majority of that will end up being shredded or used to make insulation or cloths. “Less than one per cent of textiles collected actually get recycled into new clothes,” argues Francois Souchet, lead at the foundation’s Make Fashion Circular programme. “Recycling alone cannot fix fashion’s waste and pollution problems.”

Textiles that aren’t used for recycling go to landfill, or worse, are burnt. Overproduction is also a serious problem for the fashion industry because it hits the bottom line. H&M wants to eliminate it. Critical to this is Artificial Intelligence, to better use the data and algorithms available to understand and predict demand in each store.

The trouble is that big fashion retailers like H&M, Gap and Zara have created such an abundance of affordable fashion that we have come to increasingly view it as disposable. With the exception of a much-loved scarf from the 1980s, most of the clothes or bags I’ve bought from H&M haven’t last more than a few years at most. Most of my more expensive garments have.

Is cheap fashion part of the problem? Gedda doesn't think so. “The ideal fashion should be available to all, regardless of price,” she replies. “If it is expensive, it is not available to many people, and this is not sustainable. We have seen that with more sustainable foods and organic foods—it is only people with more money in their wallet who can buy them. If goods get too expensive, demand goes down, and that is not making things sustainable. If we make more sustainable fashion, and demand goes up, we can make more, and the price will come down more.”

She points as evidence of this to the impact that H&M has had on helping to bring down the price of Tencel, a wood based cellulose fibre whose production uses less water and chemicals than most.

H&M has flirted with selling both used and unsold clothes, both as an investor in Sellpy, a company that helps consumers sell second hand products, and whose 12th largest customer is & Other Stories and Afound, a predominantly online fashion outlet.

In the flagship store in Stockholm, flowers have been on sale for some months (at very reasonable prices). Now there is a coffee trolley for customers on their way to work and a beauty bar. As clothes shops go, this is a nice one. So too are the pilot stores in Hammersmith, Barcelona and Berlin, calmer and less cluttered than H&M’s usual stores. This raises the question of whether H&M is trying to edge towards something more like Burberry and Apple’s concept stores—except for the fact that the customer profile is rather different. Perhaps it goes back to Gedda’s argument that you don’t create sustainable fashion by price alone.

H&M has had a hard time over the last few years, late to deal with the challenge of online and failing to invest soon enough in better logistics, while losing its crown as the world’s biggest fashion retailer to Zara. The question is how much new look stores, and its commitment to sustainability, will be enough to fight off increasing competition and agile disruptors.