Tonight’s Dress is a student-to-student dress rental platform that helps college students save time and money on formalwear. Villanova seniors and co-CEOs Nashla Estefan and Caitlin O’Hara, both members of sororities, were drawn to the company after experiencing firsthand how challenging it can be to find dresses for multiple formals each semester.
“Something that sets apart from online thrifting is that you don’t have to be shipped your dress,” Estefan said. “Our platform allows you to pick something up in as quickly as 20 minutes. A lot of people pay a lot for expedited shipping, and the app allows people to have a quick, seamless transaction.”
Tonight’s Dress was founded in 2022 by then Villanova junior Alina Rubin, who wanted to create an app where students can rent dresses from their peers. Estefan and O’Hara later bought the company from Rubin as co-owners. The company now has a staff of eight additional student employees. When Estefan and O’Hara took over the company, they made significant changes to the app and its operations.
“We didn’t expect the amount of overhaul we had to do,” O’Hara said. “The two of us had a serious vision for where the app was going to go. Each of these stages had funding, which has helped us move along in our process.” Estefan and O’Hara have applied for an innovation grant through Villanova, which is currently in its final stage of approval.
To use the platform, students must sign up with a verified college email, both for security purposes and to ensure they can only browse dresses available on their campus. The app allows users to filter by size, length and color, and includes a chat feature so users can coordinate pickup directly.
O’Hara explained that the team’s marketing strategy is constantly evolving: “We’re not going to have the same users every year, because every year a whole grade graduates and a whole grade walks in,” she said. “It’s really important for us to keep up on our marketing efforts and make sure that our customer service and the app are running well.”
“We have to follow a cycle where every August and January we try to make sure that freshmen are joining,” Estefan said.
Tonight’s Dress promotes itself through posters and flyers in dorms, as well as on social media. The team also hosts sustainability-focused events, including a dress drive last year in collaboration with the Villanova Business Sustainability Club. These events are open to all college students, and the team is looking to collaborate with student groups at other campuses for future events.
The app currently has over 1,000 users at Penn State and plans to expand to other schools, including Bucknell University, the University of Maryland and Wake Forest University. Looking ahead, O’Hara and Estefan also hope to broaden the platform beyond dress rentals to include other types of items — a step that would support expansion to more campuses, including those in the Tri-College Consortium.
The Tonight’s Dress app is available to download on the App Store. Students can follow Tonight’s Dress on Instagram at @rent_at_tonightsdress and on TikTok at @tonightsdress, or visit tonightsdress.com for more information.
