So… About Influencers
I honestly don’t understand how some wannabe influencers think.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with patronising a small thrift business. In fact, that’s how many small businesses survive. But what I don’t understand is buying from a small business, running them through hell, insulting their product, and then turning around to pose like you got the same thing from some influential designer store.
Is arrogance part of an influencer’s job description? Because some of them are just ridiculously arrogant, and whenever I see that kind of behaviour, I can’t help but think there’s a lot of insecurity hiding underneath all that confidence.
So, my cousin owns a thrift store where she sells really lovely dresses. She’s never had a bad review from a customer until this particular low-class baddie decided to shop with her. I was actually with my cousin when this girl first messaged about a dress she wanted.
The questions were endless. Back and forth. More back and forth. If I were my cousin, I’d have given up not gonna lie.
At some point, she said she had to show the dress to her man before she could make payment. After consulting her personal fashion committee, her man apparently approved the dress, so she finally paid. And the moment the payment went through, she wanted the dress delivered immediately.
My cousin politely explained that she had other orders to pack and that deliveries would be made the following day which is simple for anyone in their right senses to understand. But nope, this girl spiralled and said my cousin needed to make an exception because she wasn’t “a small person.” Ma’am. Small or big, the business policy is the business policy.
If you desperately need your dress immediately, the policy already allows you to send your own dispatch rider to pick it up. But she wasn’t interested in that. She wanted my cousin to personally bend the rules for her because she claimed to be an influencer with a following on social media.
After a whole lot of back and forth, my cousin eventually decided not to risk having the girl drag her business online. So, despite the rain, she went out herself and delivered the dress and you’d think that would be the end of it but no. This girl left a bad review.
According to her, the dress didn’t sit properly on her body, she would have to work on it, and my cousin needed to improve her customer service and business policies. She also threatened to drag the business on social media.
The funny thing about all of this is thar this dress in question was a perfect size six, and this girl is a size six. She blocked my cousin after her rant, so there was no opportunity to even have a proper conversation about it. At that point, we just left it.
Until yesterday. Knowing how social media works, I wasn’t particularly surprised when a video of this same girl popped up on my feed. But when I saw what she was wearing, I almost screamed. It was the dress. The same dress she claimed didn’t fit. The same dress she said she wasn’t going to wear again. The same dress she supposedly needed to work on, was sitting perfectly on her. And when I tell you she looked good in it, she looked GOOD.
There was no adjustment, no extra fabric. Absolutely nothing was done to that dress.
I immediately screen-recorded the video and sent it to my cousin. But then I noticed something even funnier. People in the comments were complimenting her and asking where she got the dress and she tagged a completely different brand. Not just a different brand, a high-end brand. That’s just when everything finally clicked.
This girl didn’t actually hate the dress. She hated the idea of anyone knowing she bought it from a small thrift business. The bad review, the complaints about the fit, the unnecessary drama and the threats to expose the business suddenly made sense.
She wanted to distance herself from the actual source so badly that she was willing to make the dress seem inferior, only to turn around and wear it proudly while attaching a more prestigious name to it. And honestly, that’s the part that gets me.
There’s nothing embarrassing about buying thrift. There’s nothing embarrassing about supporting a small business. There’s nothing embarrassing about finding a beautiful dress at an affordable price.
The embarrassment is pretending you didn’t.
I’ve seen influencers buy thrifted pieces for relatively little and then present themselves online like they walked straight into Louis Vuitton and dropped thousands on them. And for what? To impress people who probably don’t care as much as you think they do? I don’t know.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather say, “I got this beautiful dress from a small thrift store,” and let the dress speak for itself. Because if something looks good, it looks good. The label doesn’t magically make it prettier.