Luxury fashion has increasingly evolved beyond traditional ownership, embracing models that offer consumers temporary access to luxury goods. Consumers can buy pre-owned designer products through resale platforms, access a rotating selection of luxury goods through membership-based subscription services or even rent individual pieces for a limited time.
On November 2, 2026, Rent the Runway (“RTR”), a fashion rental platform, announced the launch of a new luxury handbag collection, expanding its presence in a market already served by luxury-access platforms such as Vivrelle. The collection includes hundreds of styles from more than 20 designer brands and, notably, combines new, pre-owned and vintage pieces sourced through established luxury and resale channels.
For consumers, the appeal is straightforward. RTR subscribers can access coveted luxury goods without the commitment or price tag of ownership. But as rental platforms expand into high-value luxury goods, they must also confront questions of authentication and potential trademark liability.
Authentication and the Counterfeit Problem in a Circular Luxury Market
Authentication is a cornerstone consideration in the fashion industry, helping consumers distinguish genuine goods from counterfeits and other unauthorized products. For luxury brands, however, authenticity is closely tied to provenance and control over the distribution chain. A brand can guarantee the authenticity of goods sold through its own stores and authorized channels because it controls the product from manufacture through sale. Once a product leaves those channels and enters the secondary market, that certainty becomes difficult to replicate. Some brands therefore decline to authenticate products acquired outside their own or authorized distribution networks. Others have adopted product-level technologies, including embedded electronic tags and digital certificates, designed to provide greater traceability of a product’s authenticity and ownership history. The growth of online resale, however, has forced marketplaces, consumers and brands alike to grapple with increasingly sophisticated counterfeit goods. Luxury rental adds yet another wrinkle.
Unlike a traditional retail transaction, where an item typically moves just a single time from seller to buyer, a rental model depends on the same product circulating repeatedly between the “seller,” the platform, and a rotating cast of “buyers” in the form of renters. Not only that, but unlike a traditional marketplace where the seller is typically dealing exclusively in products obtained directly from brands or reputable suppliers, a rental platform incorporating pre-owned and vintage products will almost certainly involve goods with longer and less transparent chains of custody. Each additional transfer creates another point at which the platform must assess whether the item being returned is the same genuine item that entered circulation.
That makes verification throughout the product’s life cycle, rather than only at intake, particularly important. A genuine handbag could enter a rental platform only to be replaced with a counterfeit during a later rental. A vintage item could arrive without the documentation that is available for a newly manufactured product. Repairs or replacements could further complicate an authentication assessment. As counterfeiters become more sophisticated, those distinctions may become increasingly difficult. Although third-party platforms can inspect goods, evaluate provenance, and employ technological or other verification tools, those measures are not necessarily equivalent to a brand’s ability to guarantee authenticity within a distribution chain it controls. For rental platforms, therefore, managing authenticity risk may require procedures designed not only to screen products when they enter the platform but also to identify substitutions, alterations or other issues as those products repeatedly circulate. This reflects the broader anti-counterfeiting emphasis on diligence throughout the value chain rather than treating authenticity as a one-time inquiry.
Historically, the resale and rental of genuine goods presented a somewhat different concern – the extent to which a trademark owner could control subsequent transfers of its products. Trademark law’s first-sale doctrine does not permit a trademark owner to control the subsequent sale of a genuine product simply because it continues to bear the owner’s mark. This doctrine has limits, however. It generally does not extend to counterfeit goods and may not apply where genuine goods have been materially altered in ways likely to affect consumers’ perceptions of the product. For rental platforms, then, authenticity and provenance have significance beyond consumer confidence. Verification procedures can also help reduce the risk that counterfeit, substituted or materially altered goods enter, or remain in, circulation.
When a Counterfeit Slips Through: The Liability Question
But even the most robust authentication processes may not catch every counterfeit. This creates a more difficult issue of when a rental platform may itself face liability for infringing goods that pass through its business.
Trademark liability is not necessarily limited to the party directly using another’s mark. While direct trademark infringement generally focuses on a defendant’s own use of another’s trademark in commerce in a manner likely to cause consumer confusion, contributory trademark infringement can extend liability to businesses that facilitate another party’s infringement when they know or have reason to know of the infringing activity and nevertheless continue to facilitate it. For rental platforms, that possibility may be particularly relevant because their role can extend well beyond simply connecting buyers and sellers. Rather, the rental platform may itself source, possess, inspect, advertise, ship, receive and repeatedly circulate the physical goods offered to renters through its service. That degree of involvement can make the platform’s own conduct, as well as its knowledge of potential counterfeiting, particularly relevant to the liability analysis.
While the stakes may be higher in a rental model, where a single counterfeit item has the potential to reach multiple consumers over time, trademark liability does not automatically follow each time a counterfeit slips through. The analysis is highly fact specific. Among other things, it may turn on how the counterfeit entered the platform, what role the platform played in offering or distributing it, what the platform knew or had reason to know about its authenticity, and how the platform responded once concerns arose.
Those considerations also underscore the importance of distinguishing between guaranteeing authenticity and taking reasonable steps to verify it. A third-party rental platform may not have the same ability as a brand to guarantee the authenticity of goods outside the brand’s controlled distribution channels. But it can develop safeguards aimed at reducing the risk that counterfeit goods enter or remain in circulation. Those safeguards may include sourcing directly from brands or reputable suppliers, documenting provenance, inspecting incoming merchandise, using qualified third-party authentication services where appropriate, verifying products between rentals, responding promptly to authenticity complaints and removing questionable goods from circulation.
RTR’s new luxury handbag program illustrates this approach. The platform states that it sources handbags directly from brands as well as from third-party sellers of new, pre-owned and vintage goods and, where appropriate, uses third-party providers for additional authentication and verification between rentals. That last step takes on particular significance in the rental context. As the same item repeatedly leaves and returns to the platform, authentication may need to occur at more than one point in the product’s life cycle.
As luxury rental continues to grow, platforms will increasingly have to manage authenticity as an ongoing process rather than a one-time determination. No verification system can necessarily eliminate the risk that a sophisticated counterfeit will slip through. But careful sourcing, documented provenance, appropriate authentication measures and repeated verification can help reduce the risk that counterfeit or materially altered goods remain in circulation and, in turn, reduce potential trademark exposure. For platforms built around keeping luxury goods in circulation, managing what circulates with them may prove just as important.
