MY DREAM DRESS — BUT A NIGHTMARE OUTCOME

The dress: The Vampire’s Wife The Falconetti emerald metallic silk dress, retail price £1,595, rental price £27 a day. Rental company: My Wardrobe HQ Number of times rented out: Once — but it didn’t make it back home. Total cost paid by rental customers: £0 (more of which later . . .) Total I earned: £0

AT THE end of October, I received the worst email a lender can get, telling me my most expensive dress had gone missing. Worse, it had been lost in August, following its first ever rental — earning me nothing (you only get paid when the dress is returned).

I’d coveted this dress ever since seeing Kate Middleton wear it on an engagement in Dublin last year, and had convinced myself lending it out would allow me to afford it.

It was not My Wardrobe’s fault that the dress went missing, though I was surprised it took them so long to alert me. But, having done so I couldn’t fault their customer service.

Within days of admitting it was lost, I was paid back the full price of the dress, so I wasn’t left out of pocket.

But as Sacha Newell, founder of My Wardrobe HQ, pointed out to me, while they will pay out if a dress is not returned (charging the renter’s card for the loss), it’s not wise to rent out pieces that mean a lot to you.

‘We always say to vendors: “Only list items that you are happy to receive the replacement price for,” ’ she explains. ‘If it is a much-loved, special dress that you can’t replace, it’s probably not right for rental.’

Happily, through some serious detective work of my own, I recovered my dress and repaid the compensation to My Wardrobe HQ.