CaaStle gave fashion brands a way to rent their own clothes without running the laundry. Its collapse reveals how a useful retail idea became entangled with a financial fiction.

A $5,000 alterations bill exposed a strange truth about bridal retail. Carter built Laine London around the part brides actually keep: the fit, the feeling and the memory.
Lundyn Carter spent $5,000 altering a family wedding dress, then built the service she wished had existed. Laine London's sharper idea is not rental alone - it is treating fit as the product.