Finally an answer to the question “But how will it look on me?”
The e-commerce site Rent the Runway is offering a striking solution: replacing models with regular women, and allowing visitors to search for women of a certain age, height, weight and even bust size, to see how that dress looks on someone similar.
Think of it as crowdsourced sizing.
Rent the Runway’s new approach, which it introduced on Friday, is the latest example of a retailer rejecting the idea that women want fantasy when they shop.
Users of the site can already upload photos of themselves in the clothing — Rent the Runway rents dresses and formal accessories for a few days, at about 10 percent of the retail cost. And women can list their height, weight and chest size alongside their reviews. Now, visitors can perform find-women-like-me searches, ask questions of the other wearers, and choose to see only real-life women rather than models wearing the clothing.
When Rent the Runway began allowing users to upload photos a year ago, not only did more than half of the people who gave reviews volunteer their weight and bust size, but the site also found that the conversion rate for shoppers who clicked on real photos was double that of shoppers who clicked on model photos.
The reader-submitted photos resemble a bunch of feel-good photos on someone’s refrigerator, giving glimpses into different lives — and body types. Almost 300 women have uploaded pictures of themselves on Rent the Runway in a gold, floor-length, strapless Badgley Mischka dress that rents for $125.
“Seeing them on real girls, you can get a better gauge of what the dress is going to look like, because it’s not perfect photography or a perfect model,” she said.
Ms. Sartori has lately been posting her own reviews, and she happily volunteered her own height, weight, bust size and body type. “I see that it’s helpful to people, so I don’t mind,” she said.
On the revamped Rent the Runway site, users can ask questions of the real-life wearers: what heel height did you wear with that? Did you wear Spanx? Will that work as a maternity dress?
Now the push back from the fantasy dealers:
“When you present a luxury brand, in my opinion it’s not about being accessible — it’s all about the dream, it’s all about the aspiration,” said Marc Beckman, founder of Designers’ Management Agency, which has negotiated deals for the designers Oscar de la Renta and Stella McCartney. While embracing customers’ own photos made sense for midprice brands, he said, it did not work at the higher end. “There’s a lot at risk,” he said.
I don’t buy this. I’m sure the luxury brands have this fear; I think it is unfounded. I remember reading somewhere how the most frequent request the lovely people at Net-a-Porter get is “bigger sizes, please.”
Born Curious 
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