Popstar Taylor Swift announced her engagement to football player Travis Kelce in late August. The couple, who have been together since the Summer of 2023, took to Instagram with professional photos of the engagement, which took place weeks earlier in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
In her Instagram post, which has since amassed 37 million likes, Swift is pictured wearing a Ralph Lauren Striped Silk-Blend Dress. The $398 dress has since been bought out by Swift’s fans (nicknamed “Swifties”) and is sold out in all sizes on the Ralph Lauren website. The sudden sell-out of the dress begs questions regarding influencers’ impact on consumerism.
“I know [Taylor Swift] is really popular, but I find it interesting that people will buy something, like the dress, just because she wore it,” junior Iris Ekblad said. “Maybe the dress just happened to fit her fan’s tastes as a coincidence, but what if she was wearing anything else? Would everyone feel the same?”
As is evident with recent social media trends, influencers and fans play a large role in creating hype online. Ekblad says seeing celebrities wearing certain outfits on platforms like Instagram or TikTok strongly influences purchasing decisions, not only by introducing trends but also by making the items seem immediately attainable.
“[Once you see something on a celebrity] you’re like, ‘Wow, I want to wear that or buy that. Someone I admire online enjoys the item, so I must like it, too,’” Ekblad said.
Junior Laura Snow has similar views on celebrities’ impact on purchases. After hearing about Taylor Swift’s engagement through a friend, she immediately took note of the pictures online and noticed Swift’s dress. Snow says the elegance of the images, combined with Swift’s established high status and lavish lifestyle, may have heightened fans’ desires to own the dress.
“The fact that Taylor Swift herself is wearing the dress is already influential,” Snow said. “But she’s also wearing a [huge] engagement ring, so people might associate the dress with the kind of status you need to have an engagement like this one.”
Snow also believes that the large impact of Swift and Kelce’s social media accounts accelerated the demand. With Swift having the 14th most followed account on Instagram, and Kelce and her having a combined 290 million followers, their reach across the platform is hard to miss.
“When I opened [Instagram] after hearing about it, I couldn’t miss it,” Snow said. “Even some posts weren’t by Taylor or Travis. They were like fan posts, but it shows how everyone cared and everyone was talking about it.”
After the Ralph Lauren dress sold out in about twenty minutes, the impact of Swift’s reach was evident. While the instance can be seen as a microtrend that fans will easily move on from, it is also a big reminder of how consumers can make products out of cultural events.
“[It shows that] if a celebrity had a really cool moment in a really cool outfit, [fans would] be like, ‘Oh my God, I will be that celebrity and have that status if I wear that outfit,’” Snow said. “Everyone wants to buy their lifestyles.”
