Isle of Monday, New Vintage Rental Platform, Officially Launches

Isle of Monday, the first on-demand rental platform dedicated to unsigned, designer and archival vintage fashion, will officially launch Wednesday.

Founded by Gabriella Carota and Janelle Gray, Isle of Monday offers an alternative to ownership, providing access to heritage garments through a circular rental model that makes vintage clothing attainable and wearable. Isle of Monday selects pieces that have been confined to private archives, personal collections and industry circles. Every piece on the platform is sourced, vetted and treated as art history, not inventory.

Historically, access to rentable archival vintage has been informal and relationship-driven, coordinated offline through email for social media and reserved primarily for industry professionals to protect rare archival pieces. Isle of Monday looks to introduce structure and scale to this fragmented market through a technology-enabled platform. Customers can browse authenticated inventory, review detailed sizing and provenance and select rental windows, managing the entire process digitally.

“Vintage has always been deeply loved, but access has historically been limited to the wealthy and connected,” said Carota, cofounder and chief executive officer. “Isle of Monday gives these garments life again outside of the archive. Rental allows them to continue to be as they were intended: worn, seen and loved.”

Their rare designer and archival vintage is sourced through a hybrid ownership and consignment model designed for scale. About 40 percent of inventory is owned outright, acquired in bulk to maintain healthy unit economics from a proprietary network of vintage wholesalers, designer archives, auction houses and private collectors. The remaining 60 percent is sourced through revenue-sharing partnerships with collectors, stylists and vintage brands.

Isle of Monday oversees sourcing, authentification, cleaning, restoration, and logistics entirely in-house at 150 West 25th Street. Each garment is cleaned between rentals by specialists trained in couture and vintage care, inspected after every wear, and only offered in pristine condition.

Carota said she started collecting vintage in 2016 and 2017. Explaining why she loves vintage clothing, Carota said, “Each piece feels like it has its own little story. I think that’s why I started collecting to begin with. When I go to private collectors, or even if I go to antique stores, every time I would pick something up, they would tell me a story about it. I fell in love with it because I’ve always loved fashion, but that particular subset of fashion, and just learning the different stories and where this piece was worn fascinated me,” she said.

Asked if she’s worried about the pieces being ripped or stained when they’re borrowed, Carota said, sometimes if it comes back it might need a button reinforced, or a small tear fixed, but they partner with “an amazing care and cleaning team that we can easily scale with, and they do all of the repairs and reinforcements.”

Gray also said they determine how many times a garment can be rented before they ultimately retire it. She said a jacket can be extremely sturdy and might be rented out 40 times, while a dress made of silk might cap out at 15 or 20 times. Carota said that if it’s possible, they would try to use the fabric to redesign the look.

Designers featured on the site include Robert Cavalli, Vivienne Westwood, Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Ralph Lauren, Mugler and Azzedine Alaïa, among others, alongside unsigned vintage prices selected for their rarity and wearability. Standout archival offerings include runway and culturally significant garments rarely seen outside private collections that were once worn by figures such as Aaliyah, Ashanti, Naomi Campbell and Helena Christensen.

The platform launches Wednesday following significant early demand, with more than 30,000 on the waitlist and 15,000-plus active users during beta. During its first three months, Isle of Monday shipped to customers across 18 U.S. states, achieved a $377 average order value and rented 30 percent of its total inventory.

Customers rented an average of one piece per online order and two pieces per showroom visit. In response, the company has scaled quickly — 10x-ing its inventory quarter-over-quarter and it will surpass 1,500 pieces on the site in the next month or so.

Early renters have included such celebrities and creators such as Blue DeTiger, Kelsey Anderson, Brooks Nader, Iris Law and Stassi Schroeder. The brand has also cultivated a network of more than 50 professional stylists.

Its website, isleofmonday.com, offers complimentary shipping nationwide with delivery guarantee the day before a rental begins, or a full refund. Customers can select flexible rental windows of four, eight, 12 or 24 days, allowing pieces to be used for everyday wear, travel or special events.

Each garment is individually priced using a dynamic model that sets rental rates as a percentage of its market value, adjusted for condition, rarity, cultural significance, provenance, trend relevance and required preservation. While some pieces are true collectors’ items, rental remains significantly more accessible than purchasing outright. Current prices range from $50 to $1,650. The high end is a Roberto Cavalli gown from the 2003 runway.

Among the offerings on the website are a Vivienne Westwood 1997 archival pink peplum corset, which fits size 0 to 2, renting for $515; a Gucci by Tom Ford 2000 snake blouse, which fits size 2 to 4, renting from $165; a Just Cavalli 2000s midi dress, which fits size 2 to 4, renting for $190, and a Prada 1990s Rose Appliqué Dress, which fits size 0 to 4, renting for $170. There is also a Chanel fall 2004 sheer star top that fits size 2 to 4, renting for $110, and a Chloe by Stella McCartney fall 2001 long-sleeve top that fits size 2 to 6, renting for $95. The oldest piece on the platform is probably from the 1950s and the items go to the early 2000s.

The company started its beta testing on Dec. 1, and started building a 30,000-person waitlist, mostly from organic social media. “Honestly, I feel like the demand for vintage is just exponential. People are so excited about it,” Gray said.

The business is being financed by friends and family and their own capital, along with angel investors. They are continuing their fundraise this spring.

The fact that Rent the Runway — the leader in the sharing economy — hasn’t been profitable yet doesn’t worry them.

“No, Rent the Runway’s model is very different than ours. I think early rental companies in general were building in a very different time. Rent the Runway was building around 2009. The commoditized tech that’s very mainstream now, like Shopify, was not as readily available back then, which meant that companies had to essentially build from scratch, so they have the very hefty R&D costs. I will say Rent the Runway changed the way people think about clothing. They walked so we could run,” Carota said.

She said they are building at a time when commoditized tech like Shopify is readily available so they’re able “to use existing technology and then basically build on top of that and layer in our customizations, which significantly reduces our fixed costs and our R&D costs.”

At this point, customers aren’t allowed to purchase the garments. They also do showroom appointments at 150 West 25th Street for vintage rentals. Carota said the rental choices are all a la carte now and they’re not doing subscriptions. “So we have a dynamic pricing tool that ultimately allows us to determine the price of each item, but everything is around a percentage of resale. It depends on the piece in the category, but it’s between 15 and 18 percent of market value,” Carota said.

Gray said there are three main problems in the vintage industry that they’re trying to solve for. She said first, if you find an incredible vintage item on any resale marketplace, only one person gets to buy it. The other aspect is vintage has become inherently expensive, and people get frustrated with the secondhand market, and third, designer vintage pieces are typically reserved for stylists and their celebrity and influencer clients.

“So that way, we’re just democratizing access to the public, making things at a more accessible price point. More women can enjoy the same piece over and over again, because it’s rental, not resale. It’s not disappearing into one person’s closet, it’s really publicly available to the everyday consumer that wants vintage as much as a celebrity might,” Gray said.

They intake all the merchandise, unbox it and hang it up and check it out, and route it to their care and cleaning partners who give it a second check in New York City.

They shoot all the vintage looks on models in their offices. Generally, the size range is 0 to 14. They currently ship everything from their offices and eventually they’ll create a fulfillment center.

The three bestsellers on the platform so far are a jacket with a little fur trim, which rents for $60; a tiger print Roberto Cavalli set that has fur trim that rents for $350, and an archival Ralph Lauren dress that rents for more than $1,000. Currently, they have 200 items on the site, and 200 more are coming in. They plan to have 1,500 pieces by May, with the goal of around 3,500 by the end of the year.

Carota, a former EY consultant and Boston University business graduate, began her career in fashion as a model before spending years sourcing and merchandising vintage across New York City. Gray, a University of Michigan graduate with a background in companies such as Salesforce and high-growth start-ups, leads Isle of Monday’s brand, marketing, partnerships and content strategy.

Their board includes experts in fashion, technology investing and culture, including leaders from The RealReal, enterprise software, generative AI and fashion history.