Twenty-six-year-old Jennifer Lund has a thing for designer handbags. She gets a new one every month -- intricate little sculptures of tooled leather, fabric and burnished metal, made by Coach or Balenciaga or Luella, that retail for well over $1,000 apiece. Acquaintances would be forgiven for thinking that Lund, a middle-class college student who lives in a resort town on the rugged coast of Maine, is blowing her life savings on stylish shoulder candy. But Lund's means of feeding her habit is utterly practical: she rents the bags from an online company called From Bags to Riches, which ships them to her door within days. "If it weren't for the company, I'd have to go out of state to purchase a high-end couture bag," she says. And the savings are nothing to sneeze at.

In principle, luxury loaners are old hat. Think of the rented tux, that old chestnut of middle-class proms and weddings. But in the past two years, companies have moved into new, high-end areas. From Bags to Riches rents out bags for anywhere from $23 a month to around $85(all figures Canadian). Its major competitor, Bag, Borrow or Steal, operates on a subscription basis; rates start at $23 a month for "trendsetters" and go up to $115 for "divas"(for top-of-the-line couture bags). Several U.S. companies now rent out designer wedding gowns. At MyrJan, a chic bridal salon in New York City, $700 can net a few days' rental of a Vera Wang dress(including minor alterations)that retails for $3,500. And for the perfect finishing touch, Doyle & Doyle, the estate jeweller, will lend out $5,000 diamond necklaces for a fifth of the retail price. So far, the trend hasn't taken off in Canada, though From Bags to Riches will open its virtual doors to Canadian customers in April.

Luxury rental is emerging against the backdrop of a ballooning luxury-goods market. The Boston Consulting Group predicts that U.S. sales in the "new luxury" category -- marketing speak for affordable extravagances such as micro-brewed beer or Burberry scarves -- will jump from $500 billion in 2003 to over $1 trillion annually by 2010. Meanwhile, a recent New York magazine article reported that top-end fashion prices have risen by 25 to 50 per cent over the past five years. It ran with a photo of a Yves Saint Laurent dress priced at $39,193.

How did we become so posh? The American sociologist Juliet Schor has argued in books such as The Overspent American that it comes down to demography. In the decades after the Second World War, the frame of reference for most consumers was the neighbourhood, and keeping up with the Joneses was the main goal. But people today -- women, especially -- spend far more time in hierarchical workplaces, or in the company of virtual TV "friends." "Sex and the City alone," says Debi Andrus, a marketing professor at the University of Calgary, "highlighted some major premium brands to a larger audience. A lot of those people want access, want to touch the lifestyle, but don't have the means. That's where [luxury renters] can come in."

But people at the top of the hierarchy seem just as keen on luxury rentals. NetJets, a U.S. company, sells fractional ownership of private jets to subscribers who might otherwise suffer the privations of first-class airline travel. And in Britain the P1 car club loans out Bentleys, Ferraris and the like for 50 to 70 days a year; there is a joining fee of $5,000, plus $28,000 in annual charges. At the lower end: purses. "It was one of the things that surprised me about the business," says Kara Richter, the Minneapolis-based entrepreneur who founded From Bags to Riches in the fall of 2004. "My preliminary research indicated that my customers would primarily be people who couldn't afford expensive bags. We're getting those people, but we also have quite a few wealthier clients who already have a closet full of expensive bags and might have some sense of guilt over buying yet another one." Or maybe it's just the cachet of a good bargain -- this is the same demographic that wears knock-offs with pride.

All of this could soon be passé. A recent article in The Economist suggested that the rich, turned off by the democratization of luxury goods, are switching to "inconspicuous consumption," joining little-known private clubs, or pouring their millions into philanthropic foundations, not super-yachts. But, for now, luxury remains a powerful force. Richter notes the intense emotion in emails or phone calls from customers. "Sure, it comes from a sense of status," she says, "but at the same time people just feel an incredibly deep emotional attachment for the bags."

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