Azure skies, inviting pools, pretty pink cocktails – it’s that time of year when other people’s social media feeds can make us green with envy. And here I am, reclining into the buttery soft leather seat of my private jet and taking an artful sip of chilled champagne.
At the front of the cabin, my designer luggage is carefully stacked, and my rose-pink Chanel classic flap bag is nestled on my lap.
In one fell swoop, I have raised the glamour stakes into the stratosphere and beaten hands down every single holiday snap posted by lesser mortals…
But all is not what it seems.
Despite appearances, I am not a member of the 0.1 per cent, living in the lap of utter luxury. I travelled here by Tube. The ‘champagne’ is cold iced tea and my Chanel bag – although real and worth over £4,000 – is rented from BagButler at a cost of £180 for a period of just four days.
Julie Cook poses with a Chanel bag (shhh, it’s rented!) in the plush cream interior of the Learjet
She struts like an influencer off the jet in a shaggy shearling coat
Oh, and the private jet? That’s real too, but it’s not going anywhere. I’ve hired it on the tarmac by the hour — just long enough to convince the unsuspecting that I am the sort of woman for whom private jets and designer clobber are all completely normal.
Welcome to the super-inflated world of the fake Instagram post. Of course these are not really tactics used by ordinary people desperate to outdo the Joneses, but by that new breed of online-only saleswomen, the influencers.
In a digital landscape teeming with apparently glamorous women trying to sell you things, an influencer needs to stand out from the crowd, and what better way than to ‘stage’ a lifestyle that screams super-wealthy and super-successful.
Setting up pictures like this works by making people pause their daily scroll to take a closer look, says Katya Varbanova, CEO of Viral Marketing Stars, a company that helps entrepreneurs and businesses grow their brands with social media marketing.
‘They do it for the implied status it signals to their followers,’ she says. ‘A luxury lifestyle attracts attention and the ones who can’t afford it sometimes “fake it till they make it”.
‘If you scroll through the Instagram account of any luxury lifestyle influencer, whether real or fake, the number one comment is often “Who is this and how can they afford this life?” or “What does she do? I need to know.”
‘It’s a great way to get thousands of strangers to admire them, even though they’re admiring a mask, not the real person.’
What I’m doing is in fact common practice. We all know that influencers work by leveraging our envy of their clothes, beauty, clean houses or cute children, and the more we coo over them, the more a company will pay them to promote a product.
The trouble is, the online world is almost saturated. The Wall Street Journal recently revealed the stark economics of a career in influencing, with 48 per cent of all influencers making £11,800 or less in 2023 and just 13 per cent attracting more than £78,000 in deals with brands.
So, what do you do to make people want your lovely life more than that of your rivals? You mock it up.
‘So much of what you see on social media is faked to some degree,’ says Rhea Freeman, an award-winning social media expert.
‘People with super clean and tidy homes that depict the perfect life might just have one clean and tidy corner. They might be beyond miserable, but they turn on what they think people want to see because of what it’s likely to produce — more likes and ultimately more money and freebies for them from brands that like what they see and want to collaborate.
‘Whether it’s a true depiction of their real life or not is often secondary, particularly if the revenue generated from being an influencer is significant to them or it’s their main job.’
Do we care that they’re lying to us? Enough, it seems, to lap up the exposes — often by genuine influencers ‘outing’ others in videos — that have come thick and fast over the past few years.
Australian actress and model Suzan Mutesi, for example, was accused of lying about boarding a real private jet in 2022 when viewers discovered it was actually parked in a hangar.
Ahem, much like mine is today.
Julie toasts her successful staging mission with Moet et Chandon champagne
She seems to blend in nicely to the executive set
In fact, setting up this subterfuge was relatively quick and easy. All it took was a few well-placed phone calls to borrow and rent the fashion pieces, and indeed the plane. The vintage Chanel brooch worth £1,600 came from Susan Caplan. Her pieces can be rented from as little as £15 on hurrcollective.com. I rented the mini white Lady Dior bag from Christian Dior (£175 for four days from BagButler) and also the bright orange Aspinal of London bag (available from By Rotation from £20 a day). My Chanel-inspired ballet flats are from Dune and cost £75, and my turquoise fitted dress, which looks designer, in fact came from Karen Millen (£75.65).
Then there was the jet, which costs from £1,000 a day. Add in a professional hair and make-up team (up to £750) to make this 40-something mum and housewife look like the kind of woman who can influence your buying decisions and I defy anyone to tell me apart from the ‘real thing’. Yes, the outlay is big but if that can generate brand deals worth thousands of pounds by gaining you followers, then it’s an investment worth making.
The private jet pic, with its connotations not just of wealth but of a global elite — of fabulous holidays and VIP treatment — has become something of a stock-in-trade. Just typing #jetlife into Google reveals a page worth of beautiful women with impossibly contoured cheekbones recreating the scene I’ve easily staged myself.
My Learjet is hired from Shoot Aviation in Berkshire, who provide plane sets for Bond films and music videos, but I needn’t have hired a real plane. Warehouses have popped up in the UK with fake jet interiors where wannabe influencers can have their snaps taken — complete with leather-look seats, fake jet windows and the obligatory glass of champagne. In America, where demand is even greater, you can rent a fake private jet interior space from $44 an hour.
Indeed, the numbers of people faking it are startling.
‘If by fake you mean not real jets, not real bags and not real holidays, then in my experience, 25 per cent of overall luxury lifestyle content is faked,’ says Katya.
‘But if you also include the influencers who buy their luxury lifestyle with loans and credit cards, in the hopes of becoming wealthy one day, I’d bump that figure up to 40 per cent. The “fake it ’til you make it” creators tend to experience short-term success, whether that’s money, fame or status, but don’t usually sustain it.’
I am not immune to Instagram glamour by any means. Like many frazzled mums (I have a 15-year-old and a ten-year-old) I like to ‘see how the other half live’ and follow a number of gorgeous women who model the latest cashmere loungewear or pose in sports cars on their way to somewhere more glamorous than my kitchen.
And yes, I have bought the occasional bag or pair of shoes because the person showcasing it on social media looks like the kind of woman I occasionally dream of being.
But could I be a fake influencer myself? There’s no denying the initial thrill. Climbing up into a private jet feels like an experience in itself, even if it’s not heading for Monaco. The interior is pristine with cream leather seats and a mahogany pull out table. I drape myself into my chair, ensuring an empty bottle of Moet et Chandon is in view, and the Daily Mail’s photographer snaps away.
I move around the jet, looking out of the window at the – er – grey car park outside and pretend I’m cloud-gazing. Outfits are changed, more pictures are taken. And for the first 20 minutes or so I am almost taken in myself. But as the minutes pass, I find myself rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of it all.
The jet isn’t going anywhere. It’s stationary on a rainy tarmac airfield. The Chanel bag will be returned to the rental store, along with the jewellery. And tonight, instead of landing in Monaco, I’ll return to my house to make my kids bangers and mash.
Australian actress and model Suzan Mutesi was accused of lying about boarding a real private jet in 2022 when viewers discovered it was actually parked in a hangar
The actress certainly looked the part – but look through the window and you can see the inside of a hangar
And it’s not just the madness of all this dress up, the blatant attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of viewers. ‘It’s mentally exhausting to wear a mask every day of your life,’ says Katya. Potentially at least, it’s mentally damaging too. ‘If your audience falls in love with a fake version of you, deep down you’re always going to wonder if the real you is loveable.’
I wonder if I have succeeded, then, in faking my glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle?
I sent Katya some snaps from the jet I took on my phone, surrounded by bags, Moet, luggage and in my fur coat.
Her response? ‘A few of the photos may pass as believable for someone new to social media. But I’m asking myself why would your luggage be next to your seat? Typically, on private jets, luggage is stored at the front or the back of the aircraft.
‘The picture with the Hermes lookalike bag may pass as real. It’s hard to tell because of the way you’re sitting, which will raise less questions! Typically, the more the photo shows, the greater the margin of error making it more likely to be identified as a fake set up.
‘I think it’s highly likely that someone without much media experience could believe those photos are real!’
As for tips on how to spot the real from the fake, Katya says there are things we can look out for. ‘Check for bot followers. If you see a huge ratio of “egg” accounts [those that show a blank oval in place of a profile photo], chances are they might be bots. Another trick is to upload the influencer’s image to Google image search, which will tell you if it’s been posted by someone else before them.
‘When you watch a real influencer, you tend to get nuggets of real inspiration or education. But when you see a fake one, they’ll often say a lot without saying anything. Look out for that. And follow creators for at least two years before you make big purchasing decisions inspired by them. Maintaining a lie for that long is much harder than for a few months.’
As I pack away the last of the rented high fashion, I’m inclined to agree. Back to the real world it is, and my usual holiday posts of the family scoffing ice cream cones on the seafront at Frinton.
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