Rent the Runway started with a sister and a dress she could not afford. Jennifer Hyman watched her sister spend money she did not have on an outfit for a wedding. Hyman and her Harvard Business School classmate Jennifer Fleiss decided she should have been able to rent it instead. By the time the company filed to go public in 2021, it ran a subscription closet, shipped garments across the country and cleaned them in its own warehouses.

Two Jennifers and a Dry Cleaner

The founders launched in 2009 by renting designer gowns for single events. They soon learned the hard part was logistics. Every dress had to go out, come back, get cleaned, get repaired and go out again, fast. Rent the Runway built one of the largest dry-cleaning operations in America to make that loop work. Later it added a monthly subscription, so a customer could treat its warehouse as her own closet.

A Pandemic, Then the Bell

The pandemic emptied the calendar of weddings and office days, and the company cut deep. It came back to price its IPO at $21 a share in October 2021, listing on Nasdaq as RENT. The stock opened at $23 and closed its first day at $19.29. Losses and debt weighed on the shares for years. In October 2025 a recapitalization cut its debt to $120 million, and the stock still trades on Nasdaq.

Cover: Madame Paul Escudier (Louise Lefevre), John Singer Sargent. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a woman in a grand gown (the dress for the night).