Pastiched Personalities: Neo-liberalism and the Loss of Authenticity
The nature of the fast-paced meta based world Instagram influencers exist within promotes avid over-consumption leading to a loss of personal identity and ultimately a perfect vector for advertisements to reach the public. Fashion brands, big and small, often use these ‘lifestyle’ influencers to promote their products through. The long history of tie-in's from the original days of Hollywood are now found in every bit of visual material produced by these online personalities. Products placements are carefully thought through to enable the consumers eye to be drawn to it immediately. This essay will discuss the role of neo-liberalism in the loss of authenticity and argue that not has the person become the influencer, but now iconic pieces of fashion also play the role of the influencer as they do immaterial labour for fast fashion brands by unwillingly promoting the designs that are mimicking their own iconography. This dystopian de-centring of a cyclical process where an item is designed, produced and sold to its audience now has the added stage of fast fashion brands de-centring the importance of creative practice with little to no substance and then profiting off a lazy pastiche of refined quality design. Taking it a step further, there has recently been a trend in customizing these iconic items, resulting in an unsustainable mass-production of soulless accessories that are consumed by an individual that has been taught that personality comes from the products we consume. It a facade of authenticity. In a postmodern society, taste is to be dictated by those promoting personality from an empty depository lost of faith but full of capital – cultural and economic. That capital is dictated by conglomerates putting it in their pockets with the result being a bricolage of aesthetic codes pulled from random sources being fed to an unknowing audience creating a hegemonic school of thought around the ideals of taste.
The Balenciaga ‘Le City’ bag was designed by Nicolas Ghesquière in 2000 when he was tasked with creating the next ‘it’ bag (Ante, 2024). It rose to popularity as the bag was seen with ever it-girl of the early 2000s. Amid the resurgence of indie sleaze fashion, Demna, the current creative director of Balenciaga, reintroduced the neo-classic bag named the Motorcycle Bag in 2021 featuring a more streamlined silhouette that was adopted by big internet personalities such as Kendall Jenner. The Le City bag is now back in 2024 with a slouchier silhouette very reminiscent of the early 2000s style. It has been re-established as the go to it-girl bag in the contemporary fashion zeitgeist as a piece of 2000s nostalgia that reflects the current mood resurgence of simple chicness with a touch of sleaziness. The bag has many iconic features with the most prominent one being the elongated leather zip ties and silver studded hardware. Additionally, the bag comes with a mirror connected with one of the leather ties, allowing the wearer to dangle it from the bag itself. All these features are the ones we see reclaimed by fast fashion brands as they produce suspiciously similarly shaped bags at a fraction of the cost. Figure 1 and Figure 2 depicts two bags side by side demonstrating the obvious signifiers used by companies to mimic the Le City bag.
Firstly, we must understand the role of the influencer in this cycle, for a bag can't promote itself completely organically. An influencer is a “public personality with a significant social media following who use these profiles to aestheticize and monetize their lifestyles in various ways” (de Perthuis and Findlay, 2019). Through clicks, likes and shares so brand get more footfall at a cheaper rate than traditional advertising such as billboards, promotional videos and radio adverts. It is neo-liberal in mindset, with the active status of an influence is the promotion of oneself for personal gain (Weiner, 2024). In their study, ‘How Fashion Travels: The Fashionable Ideal in the Age of Instagram”, De Parthius and Finlay argue that the visual regimes of influencers create a homogenous authenticity that is always relative to something else. Social media platforms such as Instagram now set the template of the fashionable ideal through a facade of laissez-faire when it comes to content creating. Most influencers produce professional imagery with an imagined distanced effect on what they are promoting as they themselves seem like amateurs and just people ‘life-style- blogging. This blur between innocent amateur and content fanatic confuses our ideas of authenticity. Because social media is a democratisation of the internet, the influencer seems like they are posting their content just as we would – without much thought. This is how influencers started and “historically many were “gifted” free product or incentivized to support a brand through other promotional strategies, such as being invited to exclusive influencer or industry events, rather than being paid” (de Perthuis and Findlay, 2019) performing as a pawn in a period of late capitalism where this sort of immaterial labour not only doesn't get paid, but actually gets the influencer to re-promote what they are gifted as though it was an act of kindness. This is a sort of ‘vfame’ - a term explained in Mark Rowlands book ‘Fame’. In becoming vfamous one “might employ a level of intelligence or process of reasoning that meet objective and independent standards of excellence” (Rowlands, 2014) and is a symptom of getting famous with abandonment of objective achievement and success. The reason this is important is if an individual has achieved a level of success that is substantiated by an action or talent they have, then there is a level of authenticity to their influence as it is evident comes from a place of passion or success. Influencers success – economically or personally – doesn’t necessarily mean achievement and is based off a hollow platform that is just using them for capital gain. This neo-liberal system of vfame promotes un-authentic personality as gain come from being easily malleable to whatever trend will create some wealth.
Currently, the Le City bag and the average influencer is a match made in heaven. With the current recollections of y2k sensibilities, it is a signifier to their followers that they are in tune with fashion trends. Additionally, the high price tag of the bag makes it a successful way promote one's own economic state – which is where I want to bring our attention to fast fashion. As the city bag rose in popularity amongst the internet community, it became quickly apparent for the fast fashion brands that the bag was inaccessible to the masses. Consequently, brands such as H&M, Bershka, Zara, Weekday, Asos, etc all pastiched the aesthetics of the Le City bag almost to the point where if you weren’t a fashion fanatic, you wouldn't know. As these brands are much more affordable that luxury brands, the in-the-know city bag became the it-bag for every person shopping at that time. As much as bags with the same features were being sold, so were the original ones. This late capitalistic phenomenon of a never ending cycle of consuming could be argued to be what creates a hegemonic taste in fashion. The cycle exists whereby an influencer has an authentic item that is then bought by smaller influencers in a bid to gain popularity. These smaller influencers are copied by micro influencers that don't have the capacity to spend as much, so they buy into the duped item. As they promote the duped item to be as good as the real deal in a bid for vfame, consumers without an online personality buy into a trend that has been made successful accessible for them. As David Boyle points out, “authenticity is fighting it out with the virtual real, the fake real, faux faux and the downright fraudulent.” (Boyle, 2004, pg. 263). Arguably we find ourself in the death of art, where traditional boundaries between high art and mass culture have been disseminated and the essence held within the process of making high art is intentionally ignored in favour of popular culture. Here, neo-liberal aesthetic labour ideals of Instagram influencers return the individual with success found in showing their personal taste to a template personality autonomous to a brand.
The over-consumption of pastiche-d products to the point where they saturate everyone's life urges the individual to reclaim their autonomy in a hegemonic fashion-based landscape. In the case of the mass popularized Le City bag, the way that was done was through ‘personalizing’* their product. As shown in Figure 3, influencers that were grappling for another reason to self-promote began to customize their bags with keychains, ribbons, necklaces and near to anything they could hang off it. This is no doubt a nod to the late Jane Birkin, who famously overfilled and personalised her Hermès Birkin Bag. However, as her personal success was well rounded in value, authenticity in how her image was being communicated through these personalization's was not a subject she needed to grapple with. Not only does this personalization feed into un-healthy mass consumption practice, it also signifies a commodification of the personality (Weiner, 2024). The goal to create an original narrative of ones-self through items that are made to be promoted and consumed by millions of people poses a juxtaposition of purpose. We must then ask ourselves, to what extent does the individual have agency over their personal identity? It is part of the postmodern condition to recollect the past through the emotion of nostalgia and to relocate it in the contemporary using irony (Jones, 2024). The cycle of aesthetic shift for the Le City bag reflects contemporary societal sympathies to their current condition. For now, over consumption and neo-liberal attitudes of self-promotion and commodification of the personality are translated online through a collection of signifiers. These signifiers exist in two forms, the first being the possession of the Le City bag as a proclamation of nostalgia for the ‘Y2K’ era, and the second being the customisation of such using an unstable aesthetic code that fluctuates with the unstoppable micro-trend cycle. This is arguably a simulacrum of the post-modern condition (Morgado, 1996). Amy Francombe’s article featured in Vogue Business named “Gen Zs want ‘chaotic customisation’ in 2025. How can brands tap in?” (Francombe, 2024) is almost like a trick question. Brands are promoting an unstable relationship between consumer and product by capitalising off every micro-trend and marketing themselves as a signifier of personal taste. ‘Chaotic customization’ undermines the ability for people to be truly autonomous in their style as their taste is dictated by those profiting off of it. Here – not only is the wearer of their customized Le City bag doing immaterial labour in promoting Balenciaga, but the bag itself as acting as a vector to promote the over-consumption of desirable accessories that constitute personality.
To conclude, social media influencers operate as marketing tools, blending curated lifestyles with product endorsements under the guise of personal expression. This phenomenon is exemplified by the Balenciaga Le City bag, which, through its resurgence, has become a symbol of Y2K nostalgia and a status marker among influencers. The essay argues that not only is the influencer doing immaterial labour for the brands, but the bag itself is also a resource for fashion brands to promote themselves by mimicking its shape. These imitations fuel over-consumption as more customer can afford their style while perpetuating a hegemonic fashion narrative dictated by corporations. The personalization trend, where consumers adorn their bags with accessories, attempts to reclaim individuality but ultimately reinforces the system it critiques. These efforts echo a postmodern longing for authenticity through nostalgia, yet they remain embedded in the logic of commodification and consumption.
The essay critiques the instability of modern taste, shaped by micro-trends and influencer-driven ideals that undermine genuine autonomy. Fashion becomes a simulacrum—a reflection of corporate agendas masquerading as individual choice. These dynamic highlights the loss of creative substance, with identity commodified and manipulated by brands capitalizing on fleeting trends. In conclusion, the essay calls for critical awareness of how the influencer economy and fast fashion exploit personal expression, urging consumers to reconsider their participation in this unsustainable and inauthentic cultural landscape
The Balenciaga ‘Le City’ bag was designed by Nicolas Ghesquière in 2000 when he was tasked with creating the next ‘it’ bag (Ante, 2024). It rose to popularity as the bag was seen with ever it-girl of the early 2000s. Amid the resurgence of indie sleaze fashion, Demna, the current creative director of Balenciaga, reintroduced the neo-classic bag named the Motorcycle Bag in 2021 featuring a more streamlined silhouette that was adopted by big internet personalities such as Kendall Jenner. The Le City bag is now back in 2024 with a slouchier silhouette very reminiscent of the early 2000s style. It has been re-established as the go to it-girl bag in the contemporary fashion zeitgeist as a piece of 2000s nostalgia that reflects the current mood resurgence of simple chicness with a touch of sleaziness. The bag has many iconic features with the most prominent one being the elongated leather zip ties and silver studded hardware. Additionally, the bag comes with a mirror connected with one of the leather ties, allowing the wearer to dangle it from the bag itself. All these features are the ones we see reclaimed by fast fashion brands as they produce suspiciously similarly shaped bags at a fraction of the cost. Figure 1 and Figure 2 depicts two bags side by side demonstrating the obvious signifiers used by companies to mimic the Le City bag.
Firstly, we must understand the role of the influencer in this cycle, for a bag can't promote itself completely organically. An influencer is a “public personality with a significant social media following who use these profiles to aestheticize and monetize their lifestyles in various ways” (de Perthuis and Findlay, 2019). Through clicks, likes and shares so brand get more footfall at a cheaper rate than traditional advertising such as billboards, promotional videos and radio adverts. It is neo-liberal in mindset, with the active status of an influence is the promotion of oneself for personal gain (Weiner, 2024). In their study, ‘How Fashion Travels: The Fashionable Ideal in the Age of Instagram”, De Parthius and Finlay argue that the visual regimes of influencers create a homogenous authenticity that is always relative to something else. Social media platforms such as Instagram now set the template of the fashionable ideal through a facade of laissez-faire when it comes to content creating. Most influencers produce professional imagery with an imagined distanced effect on what they are promoting as they themselves seem like amateurs and just people ‘life-style- blogging. This blur between innocent amateur and content fanatic confuses our ideas of authenticity. Because social media is a democratisation of the internet, the influencer seems like they are posting their content just as we would – without much thought. This is how influencers started and “historically many were “gifted” free product or incentivized to support a brand through other promotional strategies, such as being invited to exclusive influencer or industry events, rather than being paid” (de Perthuis and Findlay, 2019) performing as a pawn in a period of late capitalism where this sort of immaterial labour not only doesn't get paid, but actually gets the influencer to re-promote what they are gifted as though it was an act of kindness. This is a sort of ‘vfame’ - a term explained in Mark Rowlands book ‘Fame’. In becoming vfamous one “might employ a level of intelligence or process of reasoning that meet objective and independent standards of excellence” (Rowlands, 2014) and is a symptom of getting famous with abandonment of objective achievement and success. The reason this is important is if an individual has achieved a level of success that is substantiated by an action or talent they have, then there is a level of authenticity to their influence as it is evident comes from a place of passion or success. Influencers success – economically or personally – doesn’t necessarily mean achievement and is based off a hollow platform that is just using them for capital gain. This neo-liberal system of vfame promotes un-authentic personality as gain come from being easily malleable to whatever trend will create some wealth.
Currently, the Le City bag and the average influencer is a match made in heaven. With the current recollections of y2k sensibilities, it is a signifier to their followers that they are in tune with fashion trends. Additionally, the high price tag of the bag makes it a successful way promote one's own economic state – which is where I want to bring our attention to fast fashion. As the city bag rose in popularity amongst the internet community, it became quickly apparent for the fast fashion brands that the bag was inaccessible to the masses. Consequently, brands such as H&M, Bershka, Zara, Weekday, Asos, etc all pastiched the aesthetics of the Le City bag almost to the point where if you weren’t a fashion fanatic, you wouldn't know. As these brands are much more affordable that luxury brands, the in-the-know city bag became the it-bag for every person shopping at that time. As much as bags with the same features were being sold, so were the original ones. This late capitalistic phenomenon of a never ending cycle of consuming could be argued to be what creates a hegemonic taste in fashion. The cycle exists whereby an influencer has an authentic item that is then bought by smaller influencers in a bid to gain popularity. These smaller influencers are copied by micro influencers that don't have the capacity to spend as much, so they buy into the duped item. As they promote the duped item to be as good as the real deal in a bid for vfame, consumers without an online personality buy into a trend that has been made successful accessible for them. As David Boyle points out, “authenticity is fighting it out with the virtual real, the fake real, faux faux and the downright fraudulent.” (Boyle, 2004, pg. 263). Arguably we find ourself in the death of art, where traditional boundaries between high art and mass culture have been disseminated and the essence held within the process of making high art is intentionally ignored in favour of popular culture. Here, neo-liberal aesthetic labour ideals of Instagram influencers return the individual with success found in showing their personal taste to a template personality autonomous to a brand.
The over-consumption of pastiche-d products to the point where they saturate everyone's life urges the individual to reclaim their autonomy in a hegemonic fashion-based landscape. In the case of the mass popularized Le City bag, the way that was done was through ‘personalizing’* their product. As shown in Figure 3, influencers that were grappling for another reason to self-promote began to customize their bags with keychains, ribbons, necklaces and near to anything they could hang off it. This is no doubt a nod to the late Jane Birkin, who famously overfilled and personalised her Hermès Birkin Bag. However, as her personal success was well rounded in value, authenticity in how her image was being communicated through these personalization's was not a subject she needed to grapple with. Not only does this personalization feed into un-healthy mass consumption practice, it also signifies a commodification of the personality (Weiner, 2024). The goal to create an original narrative of ones-self through items that are made to be promoted and consumed by millions of people poses a juxtaposition of purpose. We must then ask ourselves, to what extent does the individual have agency over their personal identity? It is part of the postmodern condition to recollect the past through the emotion of nostalgia and to relocate it in the contemporary using irony (Jones, 2024). The cycle of aesthetic shift for the Le City bag reflects contemporary societal sympathies to their current condition. For now, over consumption and neo-liberal attitudes of self-promotion and commodification of the personality are translated online through a collection of signifiers. These signifiers exist in two forms, the first being the possession of the Le City bag as a proclamation of nostalgia for the ‘Y2K’ era, and the second being the customisation of such using an unstable aesthetic code that fluctuates with the unstoppable micro-trend cycle. This is arguably a simulacrum of the post-modern condition (Morgado, 1996). Amy Francombe’s article featured in Vogue Business named “Gen Zs want ‘chaotic customisation’ in 2025. How can brands tap in?” (Francombe, 2024) is almost like a trick question. Brands are promoting an unstable relationship between consumer and product by capitalising off every micro-trend and marketing themselves as a signifier of personal taste. ‘Chaotic customization’ undermines the ability for people to be truly autonomous in their style as their taste is dictated by those profiting off of it. Here – not only is the wearer of their customized Le City bag doing immaterial labour in promoting Balenciaga, but the bag itself as acting as a vector to promote the over-consumption of desirable accessories that constitute personality.
To conclude, social media influencers operate as marketing tools, blending curated lifestyles with product endorsements under the guise of personal expression. This phenomenon is exemplified by the Balenciaga Le City bag, which, through its resurgence, has become a symbol of Y2K nostalgia and a status marker among influencers. The essay argues that not only is the influencer doing immaterial labour for the brands, but the bag itself is also a resource for fashion brands to promote themselves by mimicking its shape. These imitations fuel over-consumption as more customer can afford their style while perpetuating a hegemonic fashion narrative dictated by corporations. The personalization trend, where consumers adorn their bags with accessories, attempts to reclaim individuality but ultimately reinforces the system it critiques. These efforts echo a postmodern longing for authenticity through nostalgia, yet they remain embedded in the logic of commodification and consumption.
The essay critiques the instability of modern taste, shaped by micro-trends and influencer-driven ideals that undermine genuine autonomy. Fashion becomes a simulacrum—a reflection of corporate agendas masquerading as individual choice. These dynamic highlights the loss of creative substance, with identity commodified and manipulated by brands capitalizing on fleeting trends. In conclusion, the essay calls for critical awareness of how the influencer economy and fast fashion exploit personal expression, urging consumers to reconsider their participation in this unsustainable and inauthentic cultural landscape
.