I’ve heard a lot of buzz recently about these influencer marketing agencies being disproportionately white and didn’t really think much of it until a couple of friends who are very popular ethnic influencers were denied access without a reason.

One is Indian; she posts contemporary US fashion and also ethnic fashion like sarees when she’s at an event. The other is black and posts kawaii fashion.

The excuses were weird. “Your feed wasn’t strong enough” compared to “influencers” with many less followers and much less cohesive images. Many of the rewardstyle influencers had less than 2-3k followers (my friends have over 500k) and none of them were fashion related.

We couldn’t see any indication that companies were making sales by working with these “influencers”, and a few of them (like we wore what) don’t even do ANY Influencer marketing because they only promote their own brands. Danielle has worked with one brand this year, Joe’s Jeans, on one pair of jeans named after herself.

I don’t even know if I can call it racism so much as an extreme commitment to being boring, but when I compare their feed to the influencers I and my friends actually care about and follow, it’s a bit of an elephant dart to the face. Social media is so full of interesting and creative people that it seems crazy to...basically open an ice cream shop and every flavour is vanilla. Do people even dress like this outside of a Texas garden party?

Here’s an example of LIKEtoKNOW.it and #rewardstyle feed alongside some of the top influencers on the #whattowear hashtag, which I actually do follow. At best they’re out of touch. At worst they’re deliberately curating a feed devoid of any ethnic fashion which is EXTREMELY popular in their platform of choice right now.

I’ve also added the top posts of the #kawaiifashion hashtag because I’m often told that “black influencers aren’t popular especially in certain circles”....black influencers have millions of likes and followers even in the Asian marketplace so it really makes no sense for an American brand to be so .... 1950’s Stepford wife I guess?

I’m just really confused as to what they’re trying to achieve. They can’t be actually trying to sell anything to this generation,can they?

When the highest fashion sales are being made in 5 countries, 1 multicultural and 4 non white....and the highest selling brands aren’t working with your app and are working with urban styles and diverse models....are you even trying to have a business?

Here’s the fashion stats by country

The USA’s dropping slice of the fashion pie:

Feeds of the top selling fashion brands in the USA. Old Navy (16.6 billion). Diverse in age, race, gender, AND species lol.

Victoria’s Secret 13.2 Billion (age race and gender diversity, if not body type)

American Eagle, 4.3 billion, recently made a commitment to ONLY using their customers as models.

More fun bright colors and more diversity....

You get the point. Admittedly I’m a little close to this because watching my most popular and beautiful friends being denied by a company that is so severely out of touch is....irritating, I guess. I don’t think their behavior is boycott worthy. I don’t see the value of the app to begin with, I’m tired of seeing it advertised, and I don’t understand putting in this much work to achieve a look that is essentially my British grandmothers curtains reimagined into a lot of bad garden party dresses.

Do garden parties even exist anymore?

Does anyone deliberately wear stuff like this?