Renting Clothes Was Supposed to Be the Future of Fashion. Then Shoppers Got Bored.

Rent the Runway is betting that clothes from designers Diane von Furstenberg and Jason Wu can get clients to maintain their subscriptions. Rival clothes subscription service Stitch Fix is staking its future on non-public manufacturers.

The completely different instructions are a part of firms’ bids to stem steep subscriber losses in current months and declines of their stock-market valuations.