FETCH
COLLECTIVE

This past Tuesday I faked a coughing fit to get out of my 9 AM class for a few minutes – not because I felt like skipping class, but because I needed to be on time for Parke’s Valentine’s Day drop. And so, at 10 AM on the dot I was ready to click checkout on the pink Parke logo mockneck sweatshirt before the capsule promptly sold out in less than three minutes. As ready as I felt, with my card in hand, I wasn’t able to buy a single item from that collection. Thankfully, I lucked out about two days later when influencer Paige Lorenze’s lifestyle brand Dairy Boy dropped Valentine’s Day-themed pink, camo print lounge sets. 

 

This February, many viral influencer brands like Parke and Dairy Boy have taken advantage of the Valentine’s Day aesthetic. They release ‘exclusive’ drops with their signature logo sweatshirts and sets in shades of pink and red, capitalizing on one of Gen-Z’s biggest trends – comfy, oversized, and quite overpriced loungewear with a giant logo declaring how much the wearer spent.

 

While Parke and Dairy Boy attracted the most attention these past few weeks, they aren’t the only brands whose entire schtick is a branded sweatshirt. The Bar, founded by influencer Bridget Bahl, originally started selling chic formal dresses, but went viral for their Varsity sweatshirts with the brand name embroidered in bold letters across the front, which they priced at just under $100. The brand has now changed to only selling the Varsity sweatshirts and matching sweatpants, while some of their dresses are still available discounted on Revolve. Athleisure brand Alo’s best selling Accolade Set comes in almost every color of the rainbow, with the shiny, raised logo just big enough for everyone to know the wearer spent $300 on a sweat set. 

 

A stream of TikToks promptly filled my ‘For You Page’ following the failed Parke drop, with many expressing disgust with how the brand handled such a large influx of customers. Exclusive capsule collection drops are a large part of Parke’s brand, so complaints following these quickly sold out drops are a constant. Take, for example, Parke’s collaboration with trendy athleisure brand Set Active. Despite the collaboration’s campaign going viral before the drop, the two brands completely underestimated the amount of clicks the site would be getting. This resulted in a sell out before a majority of customers could even fill their cart. 

 

A common critique following these Parke drops is that they promote hyperconsumerism through their social media marketing. The weeks leading up to the collection involved Chelsea Parke Kramer using her personal TikTok page to tease each sweatshirt design and model the matching sets to different viral sounds in her chic apartment. The Parke collection, along with Dairy Boy’s, was sent to just about every popular fashion influencer on the app. As they ripped open the packaging to reveal an oversized sweatshirt, these influencers would express the same amount of excitement as a college acceptance video. This, along with promoting the exclusivity of a limited-time collection, prompts consumers to feel included when they buy into a certain trend. It becomes especially effective when there’s an added thrill of successfully purchasing an item that sells out in a few minutes. Plus, it makes the consumer feel like they are buying the aesthetic of the brand along with their purchase – without Paige Lorenze’s glamorous photo shoots on her Pennsylvania farm, Dairy Boy wouldn’t nearly be as successful. 

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The problem here, however, is that when this kind of marketing tactic gets too successful, these collections sell out even faster. Because the websites cannot handle the amount of customers, the site often glitches and kicks off customers, even as they’re typing their credit card information to check out. And when there are more customers unable to make a purchase than customers that are, the public starts to distrust those brands that purposefully aren’t making enough stock to meet the demand. 

 

So why do consumers keep obsessing over these brands that are essentially charging $100 for a  Gildan-quality sweatshirt that will shrink after one wash? Social media, especially TikTok, is mostly to blame. Influencers create then move on from hyper specific microtrends in less than a month (think mob wife, clean girl, etc). When almost every video on your ‘For You Page’ is yet another influencer trying on a piece of clothing and proclaiming that you absolutely must buy it, people get influenced to spend money on what’s trending for the month. In the past, it was VS Pink, at the moment, it’s a sweatshirt from Parke, and in the future, another decently expensive loungewear brand will pop up, repeating this endless cycle of a sweatshirt being a status symbol.