San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
SAYING ‘I DO’ TO RENTALS
Riya Collective: $25,000 for Desi wedding attire? Now brides and guests can rent
Regardless of where you fall on the TV anthology “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” creators Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton massage beautifully spun Desi stories out of otherwise uninventive plotting.
The show swells as it intersects with one such story: Fatima’s (played by Rakhee Thakrar) big, fat PakistaniBritish wedding, a swift dream of confetti swirls set to the sound of aunties saying “Mubarakan!” The show’s protagonist, Maya (Nathalie Emmanuel), arrives in a cocktail dress only to be halted by a kurtaclad teenager who says she can’t go in dressed like that.
In a moment of salvation, a young Pakistani girl steps up to help. “Don’t worry,” Amina says. “I’ll hook you up.”
Arian Agrawal and Sarina Siddhanti live in the exact second when Amina takes Maya by the hand. They are the founders of Riya Collective, a highend fashion startup headquartered in San Francisco that rents formal saris, threepiece lehenga sets, gowns and menswear for Desi American weddings. The company, which officially launched in April, has simultaneously tapped into an unmet need and expanded the rental clothing revolution to include nonWestern designers and reach valuable new markets.
The impetus to start Riya Collective came from Siddhanti’s own wedding. Siddhanti spent two weeks in India with her mother, sourcing material eight hours a day and trying to figure out how to ship everything back to California unscathed. The bridal party didn’t have it much easier. As Agrawal describes it, “We needed nice outfits and none of us had anything in our closets. I was driving around the Bay Area to all these aunties’ basements. It was just so expensive and, at the end of the day, we were left with all these outfits, thinking, ‘Well, we can’t wear these again.’ ”
After a year of handembroidered blouses and heavy skirts called lehengas monopolizing their closets, Agrawal and Siddhanti decided to rent their wardrobes. They threw up a quick website and soon orders started coming in from friends of friends of friends as far away as Texas and Oklahoma. Agrawal and Siddhanti realized they had stumbled into a collective need: Both Desi Americans and their friends needed to be outfitted for weddings.
Now, around two years after their personal closets opened to the public, Agrawal and Siddhanti have quit their jobs to build Riya Collec
From top: Sarina Siddhanti (left) and Arian Agrawal, of Riya Collective, with a wedding gown and scarf; groom’s jacket; detail from a Salt and Spring design. All are available to rent. tive full time.
The company has grown from a peertopeer service with an inventory of consigned items to include sizeinclusive and modern outfits provided by upandcoming and established Indian and Desi American designers available to rent or buy. Agrawal and Siddhanti recently returned from a sourcing trip to India where they shopped and established partnerships with various designers to expand the Riya inventory.
Rentals typically last four days, and prices range from $75 for a deep purple anklelength kurta with matching leggings to $2,500 for an ornate threepiece traditional bridal ensemble in vibrant fuchsia worth nearly $10,000 from designer Sabyasachi.
Users can order outfits online and receive them within four business days, much faster than waiting for clothes to arrive by way of family members stuffing sequined gowns into their checked baggage. Agrawal and Siddhanti also help outfit guests in their SoMa neighborhood showroom, answering questions about the nuances of Indian ceremonies, as much cultural ferrywomen through the Desi wedding industrial complex as they are personal stylists.
Riya has arrived in the midst of a rental fashion boom. After Rent the Runway proved that cashstrapped Millennials would pay to borrow Rachel Zoe sheaths and Marchesa gowns, the clothingasaservice company has expanded into work wear and kids’ clothes. Now, retail brands like American Eagle and designer labels like Ganni are joining the market with their own rental services. But while these programs are changing fashion for the more sustainable and affordable, the rental side of the industry has yet to explore diversity in designers or clothing selection.
And Desi wedding attire is ripe to join the rental explosion. For a traditional wedding, a member of the bridal party may need five outfits to accommodate up to four days of events. For brides, a full week of wedding attire can cost around $25,000.
Riya Collective is working to make it more accessible and sustainable to wear culturally appropriate clothing to Desi weddings for brides and guests of all backgrounds. In doing so, Agrawal and Siddhanti are also normalizing the idea of asking attendees to observe a traditional dress code.
By filling the gaps in education, affordability and convenience, Riya takes the burden off couples who have to explain their culture to nonDesi invitees and off guests who may not know where to find a lehenga set or how to dress outside of the American wedding canon.
“We are able to give nonDesi customers the ability to experience their best friends’ weddings in a way that, prior to this, they wouldn’t have,” Siddhanti says.
“Your friends want to show they put in effort,” Agrawal says, “and they’re going to feel so much better that they’re participating in your culture.”