It’s Friday night when you realize that the FSU game is just hours away and you don’t have a gameday outfit. There’s no time to go shopping and you definitely don’t want to spend a whole lot of money on clothes anyways. Now, there’s an app for that, too.
The Curtsy app allows women on college campuses to both rent out their own clothes and rent from others. The app works essentially as a shopping site, where customers can filter the clothes by size, style, color, brand and occasion. If users are not looking for anything specific, they can just scroll through the Home page to see various items and profiles, or check out the Staff Picks and Popular categories.
Once a user finds an item they want to rent, they can use the calendar to select the desired rental dates. The owner of the item then gets a notification once the request has been sent. Users can then try on the item for free, or rent it on the spot.
There is also a Cursty Instagram page specifically for UA students, where users can be featured on the curtsy.bama page. The Marketing Manager of the Curtsy app, Brooke Meitzler, sees the Instagram page as a way to further connect the users with one another.
“We always ask girls to tag us in the pictures of the outfit they want to rent or are currently renting,” Meitzler said. “We want everyone to see who is on Curtsy and to show that anyone can be featured on the Instagram page.”
The idea for the app came about when Meitzler and the current Head of Marketing for the app, Clara Agnes, were attending Ole Miss in 2016. Agnes and Meitzler were going to a date party their senior year and needed new outfits for the event. They wondered if there was an easier way to get new clothes without going shopping. Then Curtsy was born.
What Agnes and Meitzler did not expect when Curtsy started was the sense of community the app would foster.
“I remember being at Ole Miss and seeing girls who had rented our dresses and saying hi to them around campus and out at bars,” Agnes said. “We love hearing about stories of girls who have become friends through renting on our app.”
Curtsy first debuted on the Georgia, Auburn and Alabama campuses, and has now expanded to include cities like Atlanta. The UA campus has a larger number of users than any other campus after just three semesters.
“We are excited for another awesome semester at Alabama and to see how far Curtsy will go,” Agnes said.
