You Started It

Influencers encouraged us to buy luxury, and now they're suggesting they're slowing down.

Picture this, you’ve built a career online that sees you spruik and purchase luxury goods. As you’ve been documenting your life and style online, it’s evolved (as you would expect) and a part of this evolution has seen you lean into a lady of the country manor aesthetic, so everything looks rich and lush. You see luxury goods as ‘the epicentre of your channel’. As is the way of YouTube, you want to make a change to this lifestyle because ‘it doesn’t feel good anymore’, so you include the discussion/justification in a vlog. This sees you sit on the floor of your walk-in wardrobe in a white tracksuit, Louis Vuitton bags in the background, and explain how you were chasing unattainable reassurance via handbags. You talk about the number of bags you have as a ‘collection’ and you ‘edit’ this collection from 75 to 50. You are talking about the fact your life has changed, you’re a horse mum and a dog mum, you don’t use them, you’re scared to use them in case you’re robbed and keep them in vaults (?) and there is content online involving these bags that you don’t want to be a part of. Oh, and you buy a new bag at the end of it, because according to you spending a couple of thousand pounds on a Mulberry bag is cathartic and feels like freedom.

Such was the case in Lydia Elise Millen’s video Selling My Hermes Bags – The End of an era and Unboxing the ‘British’ Birkin.

I found this video infuriating to watch and don’t want to get weighed down by the contradictory justification and hypocrisy in the video. I could rant for hours. What fascinates me about this video and other content like it, is the reaction to the videos which started circulating around luxury goods, mainly Hermes, since the introduction of the tariffs, and the dismissal of a lifestyle which influencers actively participate in constantly. Whether they are buying designer goods or not.

Lydia Elise Millen never mentions the videos which were made in response to Trump’s introduction of tariffs on internationally made goods. She simply says she has been seeing content online about luxury bags which she doesn’t want to be a part of. In short, Hermes said they will pass on the cost of these tariffs to consumers. Their bags range from $5000 to $30,000 with some even retailing for over $100,000 on the second-hand market. Workers in China then revealed how luxury handbags are actually made. I can’t speak to the legitimacy of these videos, all I can find out is that majority of their products are made in France, where the rest are made and how I’m not sure. Ironically Hermes don’t use influencers for their marketing, but they still have a presence in this space

The commenters on Lydia’s video are proud of her and resonate with the idea that we all get stuck on the idea that material posessions bring meaning to our lives and are used to mark special occasions but the special occasion itself does that. I respect this epiphany, yet Lydia like many creators, has built a career on encouraging people to buy things, and exploit these very emotions of buying as a way to celebrate as well as amplify the nonsensical ideas like buying new clothes for every season or event, that she is talking about as being a part of the problem in the video

What is baffling about the video, and other videos which are similar, is the complete lack of responsibility creators take when it comes to encouraging the purchasing of luxury products and the creation of certain lifestyles. Whilst it’s natural for people to evolve, their decisions are all elements of their brand which can be marketed and honed to relate to their audience, all in a bid to sell products. Their decision to turn away from luxury items is a business decision which will allow them to commodify the new lifestyle they choose to adopt. So, turning away from luxury brands may seem like a moral decision to them but probably just means they’ll engage with different brands at a more reasonable price point. Chances are they worked with these brands in the past, but they were no longer compatible was they started working with higher-end labels. With this, we can see the cycle will restart itself. They will re-engage with the high street, start to turn towards higher priced accessible brands for special occasions and because they want to ‘buy things that last’ before we know it, they will start to re-engage with luxury brands. All the while taking on sponsored jobs and then culling the pieces they bring in, as these provide opportunities for content. So, we are in a cycle of buy, clear-out, buy, clear-out - but the nature of the platform means that relationships are at its centre which has led to a situation in which content creators need to justify the stage of the cycle they’re in. And all these justifications feel laboured because audiences want answers

It feels unfair that people should have to explain and defend their decisions to redo their kitchen or whatever, but audiences expect it. I think it’s because there is a tension between creators and their audiences which audiences aren’t really aware of but has been created due to the fact that on some level, audiences know that it is their views and comments and clicking of links which has allowed the creator the lifestyle they’re witnessing in each piece of content. Subscribers are bystanders to every element of the creators life (or so they think they should be) and they’re not passive. A lot of the time the comments are positive, but every so often, the fact the words don’t match up with the actions is obvious to the audience and they call it out

Regardless of how many videos influencers make suggesting that their cconsumption habits are changed, it feels as if there are very few influencers who have actually managed to do this. It seems easier for content creators to shift to participating in the luxury market, than it is for them to step away from it. According to this article, 70% of luxury brands use influencer marketing as a part of their strategy which suggests many opportunities for sponsored content.

I wonder how long it will take before they need to buy a bag to mark the occasion of not having bought one for a while?