Does Fashion Have an Over-Gifting Problem?
Flooding the feed with the "It" bag du jour is a tired strategy, and can turn discerning shoppers off.
The holidays have come and gone, but as we settle into the new year, you’ve surely noticed that many of your favorite social media personalities cleaned up when it came to seasonal gifts — particularly those from luxury brands. It’s no coincidence that dozens of influencers wind up with the same presents beautifully wrapped under their trees, as fashion houses have employed a mass gifting strategy to get their newest, trendiest products on as many eyeballs as possible for years. To the well-trained eye, there’s nothing more boring than a seeding blitz, yet it remains the marketing blueprint.
I wrote about this phenomenon for the first time almost seven years ago as editor-in-chief of Fashionista, when Dior rereleased its Y2K icon, the Saddle Bag. It was a hot item from the moment it made its debut on Dior’s Spring/Summer 2000 runway, when John Galliano was creative director. Aside from famously appearing on the arm of Carrie Bradshaw in a Season 3 episode of Sex and the City, it was beloved by highly photographed celebrities — the aughts equivalent of influencers, with paparazzi shots as their fit pics — like Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, and Mischa Barton.
In 2018, a huge push surrounding the bag’s reissue meant that it was gifted to dozens of influencers at the same time, resulting in a complete flood of the Instagram feed when they posted their photos in unison. Those were the days before the algorithm was shot, and Instagram still showed you chronological content from the people you follow. That day, Dior received millions of impressions on Instagram, though not in a manner you’d consider organic. I can’t confirm whether the influencers were paid in addition to receiving a Saddle Bag (currently retailing for $4,400), though I suspect they were, but this sort of rollout has proven to move the needle in terms of sales and build brand awareness. You’re nothing if you’re not talked about, after all!
This also meant that fashion enthusiasts on Instagram were served the Saddle Bag ad nauseum, to the point where it became tiresome in a matter of days — if not hours. At the time, I spoke to Taylor Lorenz about the spectacle. She told me: “What they’ve done is completely saturated the market and the bag is going to have a shorter shelf life because of it. You don't want to see the same thing on your feed every two seconds; that’s why people are constantly moving on from one thing to the next. If you send [an item] to that many influencers — many with overlapping fan bases — it’s going to be too much. I personally think that will backfire.”
A few days ahead of the new year, it was déjà vu — this time, for the reissue of Louis Vuitton’s famed Y2K collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, which debuted when Marc Jacobs was the house’s creative director. To celebrate the partnership’s 20th anniversary, LV spammed our feeds with limited-edition, multicolored logo bags in a variety of shapes, courtesy of the popular content creators (many of whom are friends with each other) who received one for the holidays and subsequently posted on Instagram. I personally saw five IG Stories featuring the bags in the same day, which just so happened to be the day the official press release from the French house hit my inbox.
It goes without saying that having an “It” item is crucial for a brand that wants to stay relevant; in addition to drumming up consumer interest, it’s the main way to land press coverage, or a spot on a data-backed list like the buzzy Lyst index. More than anything, it’s important for a label’s bottom line. In 2024, sales at the luxury conglomerates were down; Kering, in particular, saw a full-year operating income drop of over 47 percent, and according to a report from Bain, luxury spending in 2024 had one of its worst years since the Great Recession. But a marketing strategy that depends heavily on giving product to the same 50-100 people over and over again — regardless of their relationship to the brand, or whether they actually like the item they receive — can come off as inauthentic, or even worse, desperate.
Desire for LV x Murakami bags on the resale market hit a fever pitch in recent years due to the endless Y2K craze, and prices reflected this, so I was surprised to see how many were gifted, as demand was already high. Casting Zendaya in the campaign made it clear which demographic LV is trying to reach. However, the same, extremely online generation is embroiled in an ongoing personal style discourse which argues that shoppers need to stop being spoon fed trends and what items to buy, making the mass seeding an interesting choice.
This winter, the dominant discussion on social media surrounding style reflected a growing sentiment among young fashion enthusiasts that is firmly against the general lack of authenticity we see online and a global dependence on short-lived, algorithmic microtrends. Instead, creators encourage their followers to learn what they actually like, to take the time to hone their taste, and to stop dressing like everybody else.
The conversation also includes celebrities, who now spend much of their time (and bring in much of their income) working with brands as ambassadors and moonlighting as influencers. Last month in the Washington Post, Rachel Tashjian wrote, “Celebrity style isn’t really ‘style,’ per se, but a carefully (and often expensively) coordinated campaign between fashion houses, extremely powerful stylists and celebrities to convince us that fashion brands are culturally relevant. And this year, that machinery all but collapsed.” There are few things more carefully coordinated than a seeding spree, and now they’re more obvious than ever — even to the most casual consumers.
I took a poll of my Instagram followers after the Murakami gifting blitz in late December, posing the question: If you see the same bag gifted by a brand three or more times, do you want to buy it more, buy it less, wait to snag it on the resale market, or do you not care either way? If you like the item regardless, and are able to afford it, you’ll probably buy it whether or not a handful of influencers got it for free, so this accounts for the 25 percent of respondents who answered the latter (92 people). The vast majority, 62 percent of respondents (232 people) said it made them want to buy the item less.
Most of my followers who engage with fashion are informed about the industry, and are more clued in about what goes on behind the scenes than the average consumer. Knowing what they do, why would they spend their hard-earned money on an item that a brand has decided is “The One” for little reason beyond a marketing play? Wake up, sheeple! They also know that these pieces will be the first to hit resale sites in a few seasons when their moment inevitably passes and there’s a new “It” thing on the scene.
Interestingly, some of the most rampant gifting over the last few years has been for reissued “It” bags: Dior’s Saddle Bag, Balenciaga’s Le City, Louis Vuitton’s Neverfull, and now, its reissued Murakami collection. This makes a lot of sense: Gen Z and young millennial customers who weren’t shopping the first time around are clamoring for them on the secondhand market, so why not rerelease them to a whole new consumer base? Of course a fashion house would want to see the returns on their most popular pieces, versus the revenue going to a resale site like The RealReal, Rebag, or Fashionphile.
Murakami bags are limited-edition, so the exclusivity element is there by default; they will remain a collector’s item and have a resale shelf life long after this product push ends. When that is gone, you’ll run into trouble — especially among your VICs who spend six figures a season, and discerning shoppers who are turned off by hype and overt trendiness. I will admit, I did first learn about the Miu Miu Aventure bag this fall thanks to a coordinated influencer marketing effort, but it featured women who often work with the brand — like my dear friend Jenny Walton — and it felt more editorial, complete with a fun, on-theme questionnaire. Miu Miu was ranked the hottest brand in the world by Lyst for both Q1 and Q3 of 2024, so their strategy that strikes the delicate balance between exclusivity and accessibility is one to watch, and that more labels should adopt.
The quickest way to kill desire is to oversaturate your market. Seeding without a strategy beyond follower count puts brands in danger of cheapening their product, which is a gamble when the product is very expensive. If your customer is going to spend upwards of four figures on an item, it has to feel special and slightly out of reach. Once that is lost, they might as well save themselves the cash — or if TikTok has anything to say about it, just buy a dupe.
It feels like all these brands have forgotten that the ultimate luxury is scarcity. Oversaturating people's feed with their bags doesn't give the idea of exclusivity. It is so funny to see these very French brands take that route and observing they all belong to conglomerates. Smaller French luxury brands, whatever the category, thrive right now rightly because they don't want to be everything to everybody which unfortunately is the case for LV, Dior et al.
I think Miu Miu and Loewe are really specific cases. Both brands tap into a customer that is more arty and really like to play with their clothes rather than looking trendy or signaling their class - which I feel is the case for customers who buy LV, Dior, Balenciaga, etc. They are cultural AND fashion brand, and rightly because they are that way the community they attract people reflecting their values really well. I was going to say such strategy was only possible because they weren't part of a conglomerate, until I remember Loewe belonged to LVMH 😅🥲.