Azure skies, inviting pools, pretty pink cocktails. It’s the season for envying other people’s social media feeds. And now, here I am, reclining in the buttery soft leather seat of a private jet and expertly sipping chilled champagne.
My designer suitcases are carefully stacked at the front of the cabin, and my rose pink Chanel classic flap bag sits on my lap.
In one fell swoop, I raised my glamour levels into the stratosphere, dwarfing all the holiday photos posted by average people…
But not everything is as it seems.
Contrary to appearances, I am not part of the 0.1% who indulge in luxury. I got here on the tube, my “champagne” was iced tea and my Chanel bag, which is genuine and worth over £4,000, was rented from a bag butler for just £180 for four days.
Julie Cook poses with a Chanel bag (shhh, it’s a rental!) inside the lavish cream-colored interior of a Learjet
She struts around like an influencer getting off a jet in her fluffy shearling coat.
Oh, and a private jet? That’s true, too, but it’s not going anywhere. I rented it by the hour at the runway, and that’s enough time to convince an uninformed person that I’m a woman for whom private jets and designer clothes are totally normal.
Welcome to the super-inflated world of fake Instagram posts. Of course, this isn’t a tactic used by everyday people desperate to one-up others, but by a new breed of online-only saleswomen: influencers.
In a digital world where obviously attractive women are trying to sell things, influencers need to stand out from the crowd, and what better way to do that than by “staging” a lifestyle that makes them appear super-rich and super-successful.
Katia Varbanova, CEO of Viral Marketing Stars, a company that helps entrepreneurs and businesses grow their brands through social media marketing, said setting up a photo like this can make people stop their daily scroll and take a closer look.
“They do it to project an implicit status to their followers,” she says. “A lavish lifestyle attracts attention, and those who can’t afford it may ‘fake it ’til they make it.'”
“When you scroll through the Instagram accounts of any luxury lifestyle influencer, real or fake, the most common comments are: ‘Who is this person and how does she live like this?’ and ‘What does she do for a living? I want to know.'”
“It’s a great way to have thousands of strangers admire you, even if they’re just admiring a mask and not a real person.”
What I’m doing is actually common practice: we all know that influencers exploit our envy for their clothes, their beauty, their beautiful homes, their cute kids, and the more we adore them, the more companies pay them to promote their products.
The problem is that the online world is all but saturated: The Wall Street Journal recently revealed the bleak economics of an influencer career: by 2023, 48% of all influencers will earn less than £11,800, and only 13% will earn more than £78,000 in brand deals.
So how do you get people to want your amazing life more than your competitors? By emulating it.
“A lot of what you see on social media is faked to some degree,” says award-winning social media expert Leah Freeman.
“Even if someone has a super clean and tidy home that represents a perfect life, maybe they only have one corner that is clean and tidy. They may be miserable past the point of being miserable, but they post what they think people want to see because that’s what it generates – more likes, and ultimately more money and free stuff from brands that like what they see and want to collaborate.”
“Whether it’s a true depiction of their real lives is often a secondary issue, especially if the income they receive from being an influencer is important to them or if it’s their primary job.”
Do we care that they’re lying to us? Apparently, we’re happy to embrace the spate of exposés that have popped up over the past few years (often in videos by real influencers “exposing” others).
For example, Australian actress and model Susan Mutesi was accused of lying about flying on a real private jet in 2022, when viewers discovered that the private jet was actually parked in a hangar.
Well, that sounds a lot like my situation today.
Julie celebrated the successful staging mission with a glass of Moet & Chandon champagne.
She seems to fit in well with the executives.
In fact, the whole deception was relatively quick and easy; it only took a few well-timed phone calls to borrow and rent fashion items and flights. The vintage Chanel brooch, worth £1,600, was borrowed from Susan Caplan, whose pieces can be rented from just £15 on hurrcollective.com. I borrowed a white mini Lady Dior bag from Christian Dior (£175 for four days from BagButler) and a bright orange Aspinal of London bag (available from £20 a day from By Rotation). The Chanel-inspired ballet flats were borrowed from Dune for £75, and the designer-looking turquoise fitted dress was actually borrowed from Karen Millen (£75.65).
Then there’s the jet, which starts at £1,000 a day. Throw in a professional hair and makeup team (up to £750) and you’ll have no idea who’s the real deal and that this 40-something mum and housewife looks like the kind of woman who might influence your buying decisions. It’s a big expense, yes, but if it helps build a following and generate brand deals worth thousands of pounds, it’s worth the investment.
Photos of private jets have become something of a marketing tool, connoting not just wealth but the global elite — lavish vacations and VIP treatment; just type “#jetlife” into Google and pages of beautiful women with impossibly defined cheekbones re-enact the scenes I’ve lightly choreographed.
My Learjet was rented from Shoot Aviation, a Berkshire company that provides plane sets for Bond films and music videos. But there was no need to rent a real plane. In the UK, warehouses have popped up with fake jet interiors for aspiring influencers to take photos in, complete with leather seats, fake jet windows and the obligatory champagne glasses. In the US, where demand is even higher, space inside a fake private jet can be rented for as little as $44 an hour.
In fact, it’s amazing how many people fake it.
“By fake, I mean not real jets, not real bags, not real holidays, and in my experience, 25% of all luxury lifestyle content is fake,” Katia says.
“But if you include influencers who dream of one day becoming wealthy and take out loans and credit cards to fund their lavish lifestyles, that number rises to 40 percent. ‘Fake it till you make it’ creators tend to experience short-term success, whether it be money, fame or status, but don’t usually sustain it.”
I’m by no means immune to the glamour of Instagram. Like many exhausted moms (I have a 15-year-old and a 10-year-old), I love “seeing other people’s lives” and follow a ton of gorgeous women modeling the latest cashmere loungewear or posing in sports cars on their way to places far more glamorous than my kitchen.
And yes, I have sometimes bought a bag or a pair of shoes because the person showcasing it on social media resembles the type of woman I sometimes dream about.
But am I a fake influencer? There’s no denying the initial excitement. Boarding a private jet, even if you’re not going to Monaco, is an experience in itself. The interior is immaculate, with cream leather seats and a mahogany pull-out table. I sink into a chair, with an empty bottle of Moët & Chandon in view, while a Daily Mail photographer snaps my picture.
I move around the jet, look out the window at the (ahem) gray parking lot, pretend to be watching the clouds, change into my outfit, take photos, and for the first 20 minutes or so, I’m totally entranced, too. But as the day wears on, I find myself rolling my eyes at the absurdity of it all.
The jet isn’t going anywhere. It’s sitting on a rain-soaked runway. My Chanel bag is being returned to the rental store along with my jewelry. And instead of landing in Monaco tonight, I’m going home to make bangers and mash for my kids.
Australian actress and model Susan Mutesi was accused of lying about flying a real private jet in 2022 when viewers discovered it was actually parked in a hangar.
The actress was certainly perfect for the role, but if you peer through the window you can see inside the hangar.
And it’s not just the insanity of these masks, or the blatant attempt to fool viewers, that’s the problem. “Wearing a mask every day of your life is mentally exhausting,” Katia says. It’s also, at least potentially, psychologically damaging. “If the audience falls in love with this fake version of you, deep down you’ll always wonder if the real you is lovable.”
So, have I been successful in faking my glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle?
I was surrounded by bags, moe, luggage, and wearing my fur coat, and I sent Katya some photos I had taken on my phone from inside the jet.
Her answer? “To a social media newbie, some of the photos may be believable, but I’m asking myself why the luggage is next to the seat. Normally on a private jet, luggage is stored at the front or back of the aircraft.”
“A photo of a look-alike Hermes bag could pass as the real thing – it would be harder to tell by the way it was sitting, so there would be fewer questions! Usually, the more that is shown in a photo, the greater the margin of error and the more likely it is to be identified as a fake.”
“I think even people with little media experience would be highly likely to believe these photos are real!”
When it comes to distinguishing the real deal from the fake, Katia says there are some things to look out for: “Check your bot followers – if you see a high percentage of ‘egg’ accounts (accounts with a blank oval instead of a profile picture), they’re likely bots. Another thing you can do is upload an image of the influencer to Google Image Search, which will tell you if anyone posted before them.”
“When you look at real influencers, you’ll often find a treasure trove of genuine inspiration and learnings. But when you look at fake influencers, they often say a lot without saying anything. So be careful, and follow a creator for at least two years before you get inspired by them and make a big purchasing decision. It’s much harder to keep up a lie for that long than it is for a few months.”
As I packed up the last of my rented high fashions, I began to agree. Back in the real world, it was the usual holiday post of families munching on ice cream cones on the seafront at Frinton.
