Those darlings of the so-called sharing economy, shared - read rental - bicycles, may have gone some way to persuading us that we do not need to own stuff to survive, let alone be happy, but just how far are we willing to go to disabuse ourselves of the notion that people will think more highly of us based solely on the glitzy new possessions we can show off?

Step forward Zhang Jun, 38, a fashion industry veteran who a couple of years ago came up with the idea of shaking up the industry by making the kind of clothing you only see on fashion show catwalks accessible to the masses. Of course the expression "came up with the idea" is used rather loosely here because - in a way that Rose would no doubt appreciate - the idea was in fact a hand-me-down from others.

Those others were Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, two graduates of Harvard Business School who nine years ago set up a company called Rent the Runway in the United States that provides rental services for designer dresses, apparel and accessories. The idea for the company, Hyman and Fleiss say, was an encounter between Fleiss and her sister Becky on Thanksgiving Day in 2008. Becky showed off a $2,000 dress she had bought to go to a wedding but lamented that she had had to go into debt to buy it.

Fleiss pondered whether it would make a lot more sense for people to rent designer items rather than buy them, and when she returned to Harvard after the holiday mentioned the idea to Hyman.

The company was initially an e-commerce-only operation but has since opened brick-and-mortar shops in New York, California, Illinois and Washington, DC.