The CEO of Hirestreet on fashion trends, challenges and renting out her own bridesmaids' dresses

Bridesmaids often get to keep their glamorous gowns after fulfilling their duties at weddings, but that wasn’t to be the case at Isabella West’s nuptials.

The confetti had barely been cleared after her Newcastle wedding to Dom Waldouck before the fashion entrepreneur was asking her bridesmaids to give her their dresses . Within days they had been dry cleaned and put up for rent. As the founder of a fashion rental business Hirestreet, Isabella could see an opportunity was to be had.

Thanks to her app and website, those four dresses went on to make an appearance at many more weddings - helping her to enlist the brand behind them as one of Hirestreet’s clients.

Isabella said: “I bought my bridesmaids dresses from the team at Vesper, and then asked my bridesmaids for them back and rented them on Hirestreet. They were not thrilled. But they did really well so I went to Vesper with the data, told them they’d been worn at 20 different weddings, said please can I have some of your stock? And they said yes. Three of the bridesmaids were my sisters so they didn’t have a choice, and my best friend was the most compliant - they should have known.

“My dress? I was not very good and careful in it. I bought my dress second-hand and basically accidentally ruined it otherwise I would have rented it out. This is really embarrassing but I ended up in Cosy Joe’s in the Bigg Market on my wedding night - it is not white, it looks like I’ve been standing in oil.”

While her bridesmaids might not have been completely happy, Isabella’s opportunity-seizing move represents how her innovative thinking is helping Hirestreet to make its mark within the sustainable fashion sector.

The award-winning entrepreneur, 31, established Hirestreet in 2018 as response to the growing fast fashion industry. Through the Hirestreet app and website, customers rent outfits rather than buy clothes they would likely only wear a handful of times.

The company, launched with just a few of Ms West’s own dresses, now rents out thousands of outfits every week through its own website, and it has also joined forces with major retailers through its white label platform Zoa Rental, which works with brands including Asos, M&S, French Connection, River Island, Oasis, Nobody’s Child, Lipsy and Decathlon. Three new brands brought on board this week along including Kiwi and Co, Glamorous and Vesper, makers of her bridesmaids’ dresses.

Today, the Newcastle company has 11 staff, with the North East employees – predominantly technical staff – working remotely, while the marketing team is in London. The team is dealing with new challenges, notably the never-ending struggles of the UK retail sector and a drop in consumer spending, a challenge compounded by the growing global march of online juggernauts Temu and Shein.

Isabella, who splits her time between staff in London and Newcastle, Cheltenham and the company warehouse in Glasgow, has always worked hard to keep one step ahead of trends, but says the constantly shifting world of fashion in the last year is proving particularly problematic to navigate.

She said: “It’s a really difficult trading environment for the majority of retailers because I feel we are in quite unchartered territory with the rise of Shein and Temu - these Chinese brands which are very heavily-discounted and becoming increasingly direct-to-consumer focused. There’s no part of the market that’s having it super easy.

“What we are seeing is a bit of a ‘say-do’ gap – between what consumers say and where they are actually placing their spend. We hear all the time that sustainability is important to the consumer, but that’s not really reflective of what’s increasing volume of spend with those ultra-fast fashion players.

“There’s an interesting angle in which we have a lot of consumers shifting towards ‘experience’ spend. It’s hard to put into words, but in a nutshell people tell us they don’t want to shop unsustainably this Christmas, but they’ll potentially consider getting matching pyjamas for the experience and feelgood factor.

“Whereas people used to buy outfits and wear them once f