Website lets women rent designer clothes

Raskesh Tondon and Brett Northart were tired of hearing the women in their lives complain not having anything to wear, despite their extensive wardrobes.

"My wife has this problem where she has a closet full of clothes but says she has nothing to wear," Tondon says.

The pair of investment bankers think they can remedy this problem with a service called Le Tote, which some have described as a Netflix of women's clothing.

Northart adds that he was also inspired to start the service by "friends who were entering the workforce, but didn't want to spend a ton on [new] clothing." He says that with the popularity of services like Instagram and Facebook, women are under more pressure than ever to show off new outfits.

Le Tote works like this: for $49 a month, you belong to what is essentially a big clothing-borrowing club. You can't pick what items you'll get, but each "tote" comes with three items of clothing like pants and shirts, as well as two accessories like necklaces or earrings. When you're done with them, you ship the items back in a prepaid box, and they send you a new set of items. Your size (sizes from 0 to 10 are available) and location are taken into account. For example, come December, a woman in Los Angeles won't be getting the same kind of stuff as a woman from New York.

The items all bear a Le Tote label — they're not designer pieces. To stay on trend though, the company purchases clothes from the same wholesalers that stock stores like Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters.

And Rakesh and Brett don't pick out the clothes — they hired a buyer who previously served as a buyer for megabrands as Macy's and Nike. The clothing is geared towards women in their 20s. They don't plan to offer a men's version anytime soon — both cofounders agreeing that by and large, men remain more utilitarian with their clothing and don't crave the variety that Le Tote offers.

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