The Gwynnie Bee Experiment
FROM GWYNNIEBEE.COM
I have been eyeing Gwynnie Bee for a while now. Like, over a year. Thinking about it, browsing the clothes that they have, wondering about how the whole thing worked in practice, not just on paper. Then I thought "I bet I'm not the only one out there wondering about this subscription service," and I decided to do a review for you all! (Not sponsored in any way).
First, let me tell you what Gwynnie Bee is, in case you don't know. Actually, I'm going to let Gwynnie Bee tell you what Gwynnie Bee is:
"Gwynnie Bee is a monthly subscription clothing rental service for women sizes 10–32. It’s like having a department store as your personal closet—offering clothing for every occasion. Subscriptions include unlimited shipping and exchanges for a flat monthly fee.
Gwynnie Bee caters to subscribers throughout the USA. Our inventory has more than 2,000 styles from over 150 brands (and growing!), with new arrivals every week. A Gwynnie Bee-infused wardrobe is a day-to-day opportunity to leave the house feeling like you’ve dressed the way you want people to see you. We help women discover, experience, and enjoy great clothes without limitations."
So, I signed up for the 30-day free trial to give Gwynnie Bee a try! The first thing you have to do is build a closet. As far as I could find, through the sites FAQs section, they won't even start shipping to you till you have the closet minimum (this varies, depending on which plan you get; for the trial, I am doing a 3-piece at a time plan, so my minimum is 8 pieces in my closet). This part is fun and frustrating. I was at work when I signed up, and so I had to just guess at my sizes since I am unfamiliar with a lot of the brands. I'm sure they are very nice brands, but I do the majority of my clothes shopping at Target, Old Navy and Trashy Diva (when there is a sale). I've never been much for brand names; just don't really care who I am wearing as long as I look and feel good (and my bank account feels good, too).
However frustrating it was to have to guess my size, it was still a lot of fun to go through the crazy amount of clothes to pick from on Gwynnie Bee. My closet is well over the minimum size, and I've been checking every week for new items.
This is my "closet" at the moment. I can't wait for my new package to arrive to see which items they shipped out!
Once you build your closet, they then select from the items in it and send you however many your subscription is for (you can subscribe for one item at a time or go all the way up to ten, the price goes up with the number of items). The shipping is usually about three days, for me anyway. My first box was full of my worst fear: nothing fit. I didn't do so hot on my size guessing. But everything was just a tad too small, so now I had a starting point to base my sizing on.
i just returned these items, and, as you can see, i notified them immediately so i can get some new clothes!
One thing I really like is the "Return Notification." Once you return an item, another item is shipped out to you. You can expedite this process by letting them know you are returning something so they can get your next item out to you before the old stuff even makes it back! So when I had two dresses and a blouse that were one size too small, I hopped on the website and let them know that I was returning them (not before going through my closet and changing the sizes on EVERYTHING first). The next morning, I dropped the postage-paid return envelope off in the mail. Three days later, three new items arrived–all of them fit!
I'm using this experiment to also experiment with my fashion choices. I am not obligated to buy any of these clothes (although, if you fall in love with an item, you can totally buy it–a nice feature, I think), so why not see if I like rompers? Or let's see if I can pull off a crazy print? I like that freedom of this subscription service.
To sum it all up, here are my Pros and Cons:
PROS: Great selection of clothes; awesome shipping and returns; if you want to buy an item, it is super discounted.
CONS: You don't get to pick which items from your closet you get shipped to you; the sizing can be confusing.
NEUTRAL: The pricing, for a subscription service, is a little out of my budget; however, if you look at it terms of what you get for the price then it is a great deal.