ICYMI #013 : Marine Le Pen’s Baggatry, Dsquared2 drama, Van-Cleef-Gate, and more old money LARPING
the girls are really going through it.
Happy Monday Y’all !!
Big day for people who hate racists. Bad day for people who steal money. Marine Le Pen, France’s favorite peroxide-dipped bigot leader of the far-right National Rally party, has been found guilty of embezzling public funds, a ruling that makes her ineligible to run for the French presidency in 2027.
And through it all, she’s carried one constant: her Gerard Darel 24H bag. According to Marine, the best accessory to racism and xenophobia is this soft, slouchy leather tote. It’s always there, perched on her arm like a loyal little fascist sidekick, completing the illusion of bourgeois respectability. The Gerard Darel 24H bag is peak soft-power nationalism, expensive enough to suggest class, but not flashy enough to alienate the small-business-owning, Renault-driving conservatives she courts.
Le Pen has spent years perfecting this little Trojan horse act: less jackboots and red, black and white arm bands, more “mom next door.” Swapping Daddy’s crude, old-school extremism for a sanitized, photoshoot-ready version.
The 24H bag, which looks simple enough but with it’s IYKYK pricing kinda mirrors her politics… hiding true cost under some veneer of civility. Since my boyfriend, born-and-bred in the 16th arrondissement, clued me in on this bag, I can’t unsee it. It’s like the 24H is stalking me, on the shoulders of the posse of rich girls in our neighborhood.
I wonder if Marine Le Pen can get Gerard Darel to whip up a matching case for her ankle monitor, à la Chanel & Lindsay Lohan.
more legal drama on the horizon….
Dsquared2’s Ding-Dong Ditch
Over the weekend, Dsquared2 made a VERY bold move by cutting ties with Staff International, the Renzo Rosso-owned company that had managed its production for over two decades. In retaliation, Staff International and Renzo Rosso hit back with a lawsuit, accusing the brand of breaching their contract. Dsquared2 seems unbothered though, perhaps driven by their internet-fueled resurgence, convinced that Twitter hype is more powerful than Rosso’s old-school industry clout.
And to be fair, their confidence isn’t entirely misplaced. The never-ending Y2K nostalgia cycle is the reason Dsquared2has clawed its way back into relevance. Their Milan Fashion Week show, featuring viral performances from Doechii and JT, set the internet ablaze, reaffirming their status as the go-to brand for early-2000s excess. Their old campaigns have gone viral, their Skate Moss boots got a revival straight off the backs of Twitter memes, and the brand has become shorthand for that chaotic, sexy, Eurotrashy aesthetic that Gen Z suddenly can’t get enough of.
But if fashion history has taught us anything, it’s that letting the internet get you high off your own supply never ends well (don’t I know). Dsquared2 isn’t just gambling on their own momentum though—they seem to be actively trying to shape public opinion in their favor. BOF journalist Robert Williams suspects they paid fashion commentator Ly.as to help steer the discourse.
And while that might work for now, the internet is extremely fickle. Today’s nostalgia-fueled obsession is tomorrow’s cringe. Just ask Von Dutch, Ed Hardy, or any other Y2K darling that got a second wind before crashing right back into obscurity. So sure, for now Dsquared2 might think they’ve outgrown Renzo Rosso. But the real question is, when the hype dies down and TikTok moves on, will they have (re)built something strong enough to survive? And will retailers really risk losing OTB heavyweights like Marni, Diesel, and Jil Sander just to side with them?
While we’re talking about brands playing loose and fast…
Van-Cleef-Gate
I feel like the internet is finally realizing luxury brands don’t care about you. Have you been paying attention to Van Cleef-Gate? The brand behind the ubiquitous four-leaf clover bracelets that every Dubai-rich 23-year-old seems to own, is currently experiencing a social media reckoning. Beauty influencer Monica Hamada dropped $10K on a Van Cleef bracelet to celebrate a career milestone, then it tarnished after two months!! When she tried to get the brand to acknowledge the issue, they gaslit her and made her wait months for a response.
First, they told her the “tarnishing” was just a finger reflection (??). Then, after a drawn-out cleaning process that did nothing, they made her wait months just to send it to New York for a “professional polish.” So when the TikTok & IG comments started stacking up, they were being put on blast on all 4 corners of the internet and Van Cleef’s reputation was taking a hit, they refunded her. Oh, and they threw in an orchid and a book about the brand’s jewelry-making process as a peace offering because says “our bad” like a decorative houseplant, I guess.
But the real question is: why are people still buying these bracelets? Van Cleef’s Alhambra line has had a chokehold on socialites and stealth-wealth aspirants for decades, but the market is now flooded with dupes. Even the TikTok comments under Monica’s video were full of people saying their fakes have held up better than the real thing.
Now, after all that stress, Monica has her refund and is currently making TikToks asking her followers which bracelet she should get next. And honestly? If brands like Cartier or Tiffany’s were smart, they’d immediately invite her to shop at a discount and turn this whole mess into a social media redemption arc. Luxury brands love a viral moment, why not capitalize on Van Cleef’s loss?
On the subject of DUPES….
Kylie Swanson’s “Old Money” LARP
At this point, the quiet luxury conversation is like a cursed fashion trend that won’t go away. Every few months, some new scandal pops up to remind us that people will go to crazy lengths to cosplay as old money. The latest is a story about a social media influencer named Kylie Swanson, or as she called herself, a “Nantucket stay-at-home mom” and “Connecticut housewife”, who built a following by pretending to live in luxury properties.
Except, plot twist: she didn’t actually own or rent any of them. She was house-sitting through a pet-sitting website and posting content as if she were some generational wealth queen. And somehow, she got signed to an influencer agency before people caught on.
Now, she’s expanding her quiet luxury fantasy into an invite-only summer camp experience called Camp Nantucket and Camp Martha’s Vineyard, which is wild, considering she had never even been to Nantucket until December 2024, when she showed up to house-sit. No actual connection to these places, no real estate holdings, just a dream and a willingness to sell exclusivity to an audience that subsists on vibes.
This all comes on the back end of the recent NYC "boring influencers" discourse, where people have started calling out a new class of online personalities who have no actual personality. You know the ones, those girls who post about their iced matcha, their Pilates classes, their blowouts and their super aesthetic but depressingly lifeless apartment tours that are crack for Pinterest junkies. Kylie’s just a more extreme version of the same trend: influencers who are less about authenticity and more about curating an aspirational but ultimately hollow life.
But Kylie’s just the latest example of a much bigger trend: LARPing your life is the new influencer economy.Whether it’s pretending to be a WASP-y housewife, a jet-setting entrepreneur, or a 19th-century aristocrat, social media is full of people meticulously crafting elite personas for the aesthetic alone. Just look at The Tuxedo Society, the ultra-exclusive European social club I broke the story on, where members literally pay to be part of a curated “old money” fantasy, complete with vintage cars, black-tie tennis, and a thin layer of Instagram Ludwig filter mystique.
The real quiet luxury flex isn’t a Cartier Tank watch or an Hermès bag, it’s actually convincing people you belong in these spaces at all.
now on to influencers that are actually doing cool shit online….
Yarn Makeup: The New Margiela Face?
The internet’s latest beauty obsession is here, and it’s kinda giving Martin Margiela Artisanal by way of a Michael’s craft aisle. Enter Yarn Makeup, a surrealist trend where people literally glue pieces of yarn to their faces and paint over them.
The craze started with 19-year-old makeup artist Anna Murphy, whose avant-garde experiment—covering her face in white yarn and slathering on blush, lipstick, and eyeshadow got over 52 million views. Beauty creator Eleanor Barnes (@Snitchery) then took it viral, dubbing it "your new sleep paralysis demon".
At first glance, it reads like a TikTok fever dream, but fashion nerds might recognize a familiar reference: the theatrical, deconstructed beauty of Margiela’s early runway shows. Think: veiled models with painted-on lips, bedazzled masks, and eerie face coverings.
Some beauty lovers are embracing it, like NYC cosmetologist Ashlyn Costello, who told the New York Post said it fits her experimental style. But even Murphy herself admitted: “It looked cool, but it felt terrible.”
Still, the internet loves a DIY horror-glam moment, and yarn makeup seems like it’s this year’s first “weird beauty” trend. I might try it and report back here.
see y’all here tomorrow, same time