For By Rotation founder Eshita Kabra-Davies, sustainable fashion is about joy—and unexpected friendship

Picture this. It’s a summer evening in a shared student house that slants a little onto the street, like it’s aching to be more a part of the action. The obligatory pre-night-out wardrobe consultation is in full swing. Someone swills the juice of an unyielding lemon into a mug of vodka. As usual, no one has anything to wear. Can jeans and a nice top be the magic formula? If only it were cooler. The air sticks to all of us like a film.

So we swap tops, dresses, entire ensembles. We pull off our skins and hand them to each other, silk and lurex and rough denim. We all know that a new outfit adds a thrill to an evening—even one that will start and likely end like any other: back here, after the club lights turn unceremoniously on, to lie on the sofa or sprawl on a bed, limbs tangled. We all smell a little like each other. We all use the same laundry detergent, yes, but also, half of what we’re wearing is someone else’s.

The endless rotation of clothes was a natural fact of my early twenties—one wardrobe extended into two, four, however many of us were living in one house at one time. It’s easy to romanticise when I blur out the memories of shrinking my housemate’s favourite poplin shirt in the washing machine, to her horror, or when she gave me back a black slip, a little cigarette-singed.

This sartorial thrill, this ability to access novelty—without, importantly, buying and discarding masses of clothes, and contributing to the growing problem of fashion waste—is what Rajasthan-born, London-based Eshita Kabra-Davies is trying to furnish the women of the UK with, through her fashion rental app, By Rotation.

Kabra-Davies started her company in 2019. On By Rotation, lenders list their designer and vintage pieces—each listing is individually approved, and fast fashion brands don’t make the cut—and customers pay to rent them for a day, a week or even longer. Some of By Rotation’s best sellers are occasion pieces: spangled emerald gowns from the Princess of Wales’s favourite The Vampire’s Wife, or slinky, sheer wisps from It-girl certified label Rat and Boa.

Thankfully, By Rotation’s growth was undeterred by the lack of occasion dressing that would follow in the pandemic years: the app now boasts around 360,000 users, including famous UK names like the actor Helen Mirren, Lady Amelia Windsor, and influencer Camille Charrière. GlobalData forecasts that the UK rental apparel market will reach a value of £2.3 billion by 2029.

“I wanted the feeling of sharing clothes, like with friends,” Kabra-Davies explains, leaning her elbow on a plush armrest in London’s Mayfair. She has a curiously transcontinental accent, flecked with shades of Singapore, where she was raised, and Britain, where she has now made her home. She sits back against the tasselled cushions. “And at its heart, By Rotation is really a kind of social network.”

Kabra-Davies first decided to start By Rotation when she realised that she couldn’t find a series of outfits for her honeymoon in Rajasthan without buying them all brand new specifically for the occasion—an idea that didn’t sit well with her, particularly after seeing firsthand the mountains of textile waste that Rajasthan (and India more broadly) takes on from the West.

“I actually originally wanted to rent stuff from these very fashionable women on Instagram,” she laughs. “But obviously, it would have been weird to DM them or leave comments and say, ‘Hey, can I borrow your coat? I’ll pay you!’” And thus, By Rotation was born.

So, is she persona non grata in the fashion industry, given that in her pursuit of making the fashion industry a more sustainable place, she’s essentially shuttling would-be customers of a brand away from the sale—and into the waiting arms of a By Rotation lender?

“There was a bit of suspicion at first,” admits Kabra-Davies. “I mean, I was basically telling people not to buy [a designer’s] clothes.

“Now, I think a lot of designers have come around to realise that renting can actually be a great entry point to getting people more familiar with a brand… and then maybe also investing in a piece themselves.”

Kabra-Davies gestures to her lap, where the silk of her slip dress pools like black liquid. It’s a piece by the Turkish brand Bocan Couture, edged with white and gold lace, striking against her honeyed skin. She is the best advertisement for her own company—once I compliment her on the piece, she tells me, slyly, that she knows a place that I could rent it out. Some of her friends have, she says, and they loved the fit so much that they invested in Bocan Couture pieces of their own.

That Instagram was one of By Rotation’s founding muses is clear: the app-only platform has, from the very start, been conceived of as a community. Kabra-Davies wanted it to function as a social space, with engagement, fun and conversation at its core. While on other digital fashion platforms, like eBay, or Depop, for example, communication is a means of facilitating a transaction, at By Rotation, communication is part of the experience.

To that end, each By Rotation listing is vetted before approval, and borrowers and lenders are obliged to message each other, chat and find out about each other instead of just pressing a button. If they’re in proximity to each other, lenders and borrowers will even meet in person to swap a piece (this accounts for 30 per cent of By Rotation’s transactions). It’s another way of minimising the energy impact of fashion, while also fostering a new connection.

“It’s something people want to be a part of, rather than just make money from,” explains Kabra-Davies. A sense of togetherness, of sharing and swapping—much like a gaggle of housemates before a party—was always the polestar of product and design decisions. “People build up their profile, they have pictures and a bio. There are a lot of touchpoints which take it beyond the transactional.”

“You don’t just use [By Rotation] because you want to rent something this weekend. You use it because you want inspiration, you want ideas.”

But even she couldn’t have predicted quite how far it could go. “I wanted it, but I didn’t expect it—not at all. I thought culturally, you know, in the UK, people would be a little wary… But there are stories of girls becoming friends after our parties, of going to dinner together and hanging out [after renting from each other].”

Kabra-Davies credits the pandemic, at least partly, for the way that people have found and made lasting connections through the app.

“I think COVID made people think, ‘Oh, maybe my social network in real life is actually not that large. Maybe I should meet more people. It’s not weird for a woman in her thirties to want new friends and expand her social circle. And why not do that through fashion?”

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