Chiara Ferragni, a pioneer in the art of fashion influencing, now fallen from grace.
Embroiled in a scandal, the social media queen faces criminal charges, sponsor defection and a loss of faith among her 29 million Instagram followers.
What becomes of a famous influencer when followers suddenly drop her by the hundreds of thousands, sponsors start running for the exits and the reputation underpinning all that influence is suddenly derailed?
That question was on a lot of minds during menâs fashion week in Milan, where even excited chatter about a surprise front-row appearance by Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren SĂĄnchez, at the Dolce & Gabbana show was quickly overtaken by whispered updates on the weird case of Chiara Ferragni.
As many are aware, Ms. Ferragni is a digital entrepreneur with her own production agency, her own Prime Video series, 29 million Instagram followers and more problems at the moment than the best glow-up can conceal.
By far Italyâs most glamorous and celebrated influencer, Ms. Ferragni, 36, pioneered the business of self-branding and paid posts in Milan, starting as a fashion blogger before shifting her storytelling from documenting designer get-ups and handbags and her tastes in nail art, makeup palettes and drip coffee to tracking every dimension of her personal life.
Following her marriage to the Italian rapper Federico Leonardo Lucia â stage name Fedez â in 2018, she went on to showcase her daily existence minutely across social media. Using a variety of formats and platforms, Ms. Ferragni posted details of her idyllic wedding and subsequent relationship bobbles, including sessions in couples therapy. When she became pregnant, she posted prenatal ultrasounds of her children, Vittoria and Leone, and would later track their growth spurts and elf costumes in so much detail it attracted the attention of child welfare advocates.
She deployed social media to track her husbandâs cancer treatment and family ski holidays in the Alps, and she routinely beckoned followers into the closet of a multimillion-dollar penthouse she owns in the luxury CityLife complex in central Milan as well as a retreat they recently constructed near George Clooneyâs villa on the shores of Lake Como.
Then, abruptly, in the weeks before Christmas, Ms. Ferragni went dark. The reasons became clear when accusations resurfaced of a charitable giving scam involving her and first reported on in December 2022.
âItalian social media star faces thorny questions over charity cake fraud,â The Financial Times wrote of an investigation by the Milan prosecutorâs office into the sale of a pink-boxed Christmas cake, or pandoro, produced that year by the venerable Balocco bakery conglomerate and branded with Ms. Ferragniâs name. Consumers flocked to buy the traditional cake despite its $10 price tag â more than two and a half times the cost of a normal pandoro â lured by the Ferragni association but also the influencerâs implication on social media posts that money from the sales would be directed toward buying equipment for a childrenâs cancer hospital.
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As it happened, the cause the influencer had earmarked for charity was herself. (The Balocco bakery donated money to the hospital months before the cakes were ever put on sale.) âIn reality, Chiara Ferragni earned a million euros for putting her name on the pandoro,â Selvaggia Lucarelli, a journalist who first reported the story in the newspaper Domani, wrote in an email. But in 2022 âthe story had limited media resonance,â she said, âbecause Chiara Ferragni was powerful and untouchable.â
But that was before an Italian consumer group brought a class-action suit against her, and local officials initiated a criminal investigation charging her with aggravated fraud. Ms. Ferragni, while appealing the class-action fine, would ultimately donate a substantial sum to a womenâs rights association to fund anti-violence centers and would claim that pandoro-gate was the result of a âcommunication error.â Despite these gestures of contrition, she found herself abandoned by major sponsors like Coca-Cola, the eyewear giant Safilo and then by followers in the hundreds of thousands.
When, at last, Ms. Ferragni resurfaced on Instagram, it was to post a distinctly unglamorous mea culpa reel. In it, the social media star appeared starkly deglamorized, wearing scant makeup and dressed in a drab gray shirt resembling prison garb, to issue a public apology and to announce a genuine personal donation, this one a million euros to the Regina Margherita Hospital in Turin, Italy.
Even at that, it took no time for critics to seize on her misjudged optics, noting that the shirt she was wearing sells for 600 euros and is cashmere, and for memes to proliferate poking fun at her wardrobe choices, her no longer exalted status as one half of a glamour couple known as âFerragnezâ and even the family dog.
âUnfortunately, she must have bad people around her and made all the wrong choices,â said Raffaello Napoleone, the chief executive of Pitti Immagine, the Italian fashion and design trade group, before the Neil Barrett men’s wear show on Saturday. âWhen you make an apology, you have to appear as you really are. She appeared as a nun, and she is not a nun.â
It was no help to Ms. Ferragniâs cause that Giorgia Meloni, Italyâs prime minister, took to attacking her in fiery public speeches as an affront to decency, honesty and the very core of âItalianity,â or Italianness. And in that, some saw not only political opportunism (Fedez has been a vocal critic of the right-wing leader), but also âmore than a whiff of misogyny,â as one fashion critic noted at the Dsquared show, speaking anonymously in adherence with her publicationâs employment guidelines.
âYes, she overstepped, as maybe all the influencers overstep by becoming gurus,â the critic added. âBut the woman-on-woman attack feeds into a prevailing anti-feminist rhetoric.â
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Whether that is so, there is no doubting the pass-along effects Ms. Ferragniâs missteps have had on what Rupert Younger, the director of the Center for Corporate Reputation at the University of Oxford, termed in The Financial Times as âreputational risk.â
Consider that, despite deep seasonal discounts posted on the shiny branded goods that fill the racks and windows of the slick Ferragni store near Corso Como this busy past weekend, there was barely a shopper to be seen. No one around was spotted toting one of Chiara Ferragniâs signature bags with their logo of an oversize eye.
The scene was similar at the Ferragni outpost in Rome, according to a report in La Repubblica. Gawkers stopped to gape at the windows. Then they walked right past.
âThe criminal charges are not the most important part of the story,â Ms. Lucarelli, the journalist, said. âThey might lead to nothing.â What is important to watch, she said, is what happens after a powerful influencerâs reputation falters and with it the âadoration of her followers, who felt betrayed.â
What, in other words, is left to sell once youâve sold out?