For many women, a $1,000 dress is something to admire in the pages of a glossy magazine or see draped on the frame of a celebrity -- not an item hanging in their closet.

But a nascent website called Rent the Runway is hoping to make high-end fashions much more accessible and almost as easy as renting a movie from Netflix.

The mail-order service rents dresses from notable fashion designers like Diane Von Furstenberg, Herve Leger and Proenza Schouler for roughly one-tenth of what they would cost to buy in a retail store.

The rentals run $50 to $200 for a four-night loan and are shipped directly to the customer's doorstep. To return a dress, the customer puts it into a prepaid envelope and drops it in the mail. Dry cleaning is included in the price, but damage insurance costs $5, and in the case of outright destruction of the dress, the renter is responsible for the full retail price.

Rent the Runway is a recession-era twist on the Internet rent-by-mail model, which has been used for such things as textbooks and video games in addition to movies. Unlike those items, however, the dresses offer a touch of Cinderella -- on a budget.

Julia Harris, a 27-year-old graduate student living in New York, turned to Rent the Runway when she needed something chic for a fall wedding. For $50, she rented a fuchsia Catherine Malandrino with an elaborately ruffled bust that would have cost $495 to buy.

``It was so easy. You just wear it and drop it back in the mail to them,'' Harris said. ``I don't spend $2,000 on a dress regularly, so it's nice to be able to wear some of the more expensive brands I wouldn't be able to buy otherwise. And instead of just buying one or two dresses for this season, I can still have a lot of things to wear.''

Rent the Runway was founded by two recent Harvard Business School graduates, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Carter Fleiss. Hyman said she got the idea for the service last year after watching her younger sister agonize over whether to buy an expensive new outfit to wear to a wedding.

``Here was this young girl who loves fashion and was willing to spend a good portion of her salary on a dress that she's only going to wear once or twice, and I thought, there has to be a solution for this,'' said Hyman.

The founders say that more than 20,000 customers have signed up for the service, which has been shipping dresses only for a few weeks. Bain Capital Ventures provided seed financing, which the company used to build its inventory of 160 styles.

Rent the Runway declined to discuss its business strategy, but it is clear the company faces several risks. Unlike DVDs, fashion changes quickly, and there is no guarantee that the company will be able to rent each dress enough times to cover its costs.

Retail stores in major cities have offered dresses for rent for years. Rent the Runway is betting that its shop-by-Web convenience and the appeal of its top-quality fashions will convince women across the country to rent a dress for a special occasion without trying it on beforehand.

The company has also chosen to make the service invitation-only, which gives it an air of exclusivity but may limit its audience.

Jeff Roster, an analyst with Gartner Inc., said that execution is critical. ``If my movie doesn't come on time, I might be mad, but life goes on,'' he said. ``But if my fancy dress for a big important event doesn't arrive, that's a customer service problem like you've never had before.''