This paved the way for a specific type of online business, or “Insta boutique,” to thrive. Its transformation into a shopping destination was swift, sudden, and hardly surprising. Instagram has spent years tweaking its interface, priming users to shop on the app. (The brand did not reply to requests for comment.) Instead, like the many, many other “ghost stores” floating around the Instagram abyss, it appeared to be just another cog - albeit a barely identifiable one - in the fast fashion machine. The quirky styles and marketing had led me to think that the brand produced and designed its own clothes, rather than sourcing pre-made styles from overseas manufacturers. The Google results took me to another Instagram boutique as well as to AliExpress, a Chinese marketplace site, where the exact pieces (with the same promotional images) were sold for less than half of the stated price. A quick reverse image search of the brand’s products confirmed my doubts. These weren’t fast fashion prices, but they seemed suspiciously low for handcrafted garments. The only red flag was the price of its clothes, which ranged from $60 to $150. The tagline on its Instagram bio, “Alteration is innovation,” suggested that the brand championed clothing alteration and sold clothes that were upcycled or crafted out of old and discarded fabrics. A few months ago, I came across a fashion brand on Instagram that purported to be a Los Angeles-based, woman-owned boutique.
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