There’s a new breed of rich in
town. They’re young and
gorgeous and their kingdom
is Instagram, while IRL (In
Real Life) they’re spotted in
Mayfair with designer hand-
bags swinging from their
shoulders like soignée It
Girls, and gambolling under
the summer sun at Ascot in
a wide-brimmed Philip Treacy straw hat. Their
wrists are adorned with the latest Rolexes,
Cartiers and Audemars Piguets. They flounce
around in vintage velvet Saint Laurent dresses
with puffball sleeves and power-dress in classic
Chanel jackets with a personal assistant (or
three) in tow. They’re chauffeured around in
Lamborghinis, experiencing the elite thrill of
0-to-60 in 2.9 seconds – because #lifegoals –
then fly private jet, snapping peace-sign selfies
before taking off to Mykonos, or perhaps to a
private island.^
Naturally, every aspect of their fabulous lives
is documented online and kept for posterity.
But then the material trappings are – whisper
it – returned. That’s because the new rich are
merely playing at being rich – theirs is a life for
rent. The private plane? You can buy a seat on a
Learjet, prodded on with other passengers for
just a few hundred pounds. Sure, it defeats the
notion of going private, but you can always
crop fellow passengers out of your Instagram
shot. Designer clothes and accessories are all
available for hire, from £40 a week per piece.
A personal assistant will set you back around
£12 an hour with the online marketplace Task-
Rabbit. And there’s even a private island in the
Philippines to rent on Airbnb for £350 a night.
There are countless companies ready to give
you the life you’ve only dreamed of because,
in Britain, the rental or ‘sharing’ economy is
booming: it’s set to be worth £255 billion
by 2025, up from £12 billion in 2014. Some
say it’s buoyed by the millennial devotion to
sustainability – it’s far better for the planet to
rent your wardrobe and then pass it on to some-
one else than have it languish, unloved, after the
initial thrill wears thin. Others say it’s about the
rush of experiencing an otherwise unattainable
lifestyle. Perhaps, as the strapline of one luxury
furniture-rental company declares, with all the
sass of a teenage eye-roll, it’s because ‘ownership
is overrated.’ Or, as the millionaire publisher
Felix Dennis once famously remarked: ‘If it
flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it. It’s
cheaper in the long run.’
Fake has come full circle – it’s suddenly chic.
The pin-up girl is Anna Sorokin, or Anna
Delvey, as she is better known: the 28-year-old
Russian-German émigrée who was recently in
court for running up debts of over £210,000,while masquerading as an heiress in New York.
Now unmasked and found guilty of second-
degree grand larceny, theft of services and one
count of attempted grand larceny, Sorokin is the
opposite of shamed: she’s getting her own Netflix
series and Lena Dunham is working on a rival
script for HBO. It’s not all good news though. At
her upcoming sentencing, she could receive 15
years in prison for stealing to fund her lifestyle –
including an extravagant wardrobe of ‘Balenciaga,
maybe Alaïa,’ noted one duped acquaintance. It
could have been so much simpler if she had rented.
To prove it, I decide to live like a fake heiress
for a week, albeit legally, adopting a super-rich
life for rent. To begin, I contact as many luxury
rental companies as I can find, and very soon
beautiful clothes are being sent to the office.
They arrive in boxes stuffed with pink crêpe
paper, in white lacquered shopping bags and in
suit carriers which open to reveal a confection
of taffeta, velvet, silk and feathers.
The first outfit is a gorgeous Givenchy party
dress adorned with a galaxy of shimmering86 Tatler July 2019 tatler.combusiness that expanded to Britain three months
ago. Among its target market: City boys hoping
to show off some serious metal. I worry I might
be mugged.
If my outfit is out of place in the cold light
of day, online it’s another story. When I pose
outside Vogue House and post the images to
Instagram, I elicit more likes than I’ve ever
managed before, as well as comments such as,
‘Yass Queen’. It’s certainly more in-your-face
than the bland shots I usually upload of walking
my dog in the woods – and the likes are addictive.
Soon I am feeding the beast: pouting next to
the Tatler door; looking scornful in a fox-fur
gilet at my desk (rental: £90; retail: £500); my
stilettoed feet on the keyboard, a designer bag
hanging casually off my computer screen (rental:
£75; retail: £1,450).
At least with 67 likes, I’m doing better than
Sorokin when she first started her Instagram. An
early post in 2013 of a road sign in Germany,
‘Annaplatz’, mustered 25 likes and was perhaps
an indication she was on the road to better
things; six months later, Sorokin was snapped in
NYC, standing on a $100 bill carpet in sparkling
stilettos, #saintlaurent, her Instagram bio bearing
the ultimate expression of millennial ambition:
‘Retired Intern.’ Followers: 63,900. I too switch
my Instagram bio from Features Director to Retired
Intern. My sister texts me, ‘Are you okay?’Rented life is not just a self-esteem boost;
it actually pays to look rich. Enviable
lifestyles play far better on social media,
with their reels of self-obsession framed in soft
focus. Online there is a simple formula: the
more likes and followers a post attracts, the
more likely brands are to notice your growing
social-media ‘audience’ and bestow their products
on you to promote, or even pay you to post.
The 2018 Influencer Rich List placed Kylie
Jenner at the top. She has 133 million Instagram
followers, with whom she shares her perfect
Calabasas lifestyle, alongside advertisements
for slimming teas and her own make-up line.
Forbes ranks her as the youngest ever self-made
billionaire, and rumour has it she demands a
$1 million price tag per sponsored post.
For those without the cash, the maxim then
becomes: if you don’t make it, fake it. One
so-called Russian ‘billionaire’s daughter’ who was
part of the Rich Kids of Instagram set was outed
by The Guardian journalist Marina Hyde as renting
a room at Hyde’s mother-in-law’s Kensington
flat, which she’d secured through SpareRoom and
paraded online as if it were her pad. Of Julia
Stakhiva’s posts, Hyde wrote, ‘It is hard to pick
a standout, but for me it’s probably edged by
the snap of her reclining on my mother-in-
law’s bed, stroking the latter’s cat in a casually
proprietorial fashion.’ ]I switch myInstagram bio fromFeatures Director toRetired Intern. Mysister texts me,‘Are you okay?’silver sequins (rental price: £180; retail price:
£1,500). It comes from Nothing To Wear, a
company its founder Cyrine Allani Joaristi set
up a year and half ago after moving from her
mansion in Mexico to London and realising
that the wardrobe in her Chelsea apartment
was hopelessly small. Surely all Londoners were
similarly afflicted? Unable to store her clothes,
Cyrine’s idea for ‘designers on speed-dial’ was
born. Dresses and accessories are dispatched by
courier and clients have a two-hour window to
try on everything they’ve ordered and send back
the clothes they don’t like, without charge.
On a packed Overground train on a Monday
morning, I am in the Givenchy dress. The light
refracts off its armoury of sequins and into the
grey faces of commuters, turning heads into
human disco balls. I worry I am blinding people.
I worry it looks like I’ve been out all night and
am now attempting the world’s most stylish
walk of shame. On my wrist is a giant Aude-
mars Piguet diver’s watch (rental: £380; retail:
£15,000) from Acquired Time, which has a
tiered subscription fee for a rotation of watches
every month. It’s an established Singapore07-19WELL-LifeforRent.indd 86 03/05/2019 14:30