Are you a ‘knitted Bally baddie’? How fashion starter packs became a marketing tool

“Millennial desperately clinging to their simpler youth starter pack,” states one meme by @PatheticFashion, featuring a bedazzled Motorola flip phone, Uggs and flared bootcut jeans. Another, by @Socks_House_Meeting, reads: “Are you a knitted Bally baddie”, alongside a collage that includes a Le Labo Baie 19 scent, an Adidas x Wales Bonner Samba shoe and a Bally balaclava.

Starter pack memes are collages of images and text that illustrate — and often poke fun at — a stereotypical person, place or mindset. Typically satirical, they distill cultural clichés, trends or niche behaviours into highly shareable snapshots. First popularised in 2016 by @PoundlandBandit, the format has been embraced by a new wave of accounts in the last two years, including the aforementioned, plus @NolitaDirtbag, @TheFakeRothko, @Real_Housewives_of_Clapton and @ToteBagFanAccount.

“People like to feel like they belong to something, and they love to tag their friends to tell them they belong to something,” says Cathal Berragan, founder of @PatheticFashion, on the account’s rising power (and following, which now sits at 167,000). “There’s also something deeply satisfying about being able to piece together a movement or trend you’ve noticed in real life but haven’t been able to articulate — that’s the ‘aha’ magic of a starter pack.”

Brands are leaning in. The RealReal, H&M and Jouissance Parfums are among those to have partnered with starter pack meme accounts in the last two months, either on product placements featured within the memes, or on brand-specific starter packs. Gucci was an early adopter, embracing the format as soon as 2017 with its #TFWGucci campaign, collaborating with @YouveGotNoMale on a “Gucci starter pack” collage featuring a search bar with the question “how do I tie a bow chic like Gucci” and a text message stating “I saw Hari Nef in a Gucci snake purse and matching Gucci sandals, so I bought a Gucci snake purse and matching Gucci sandals.”

“In a world where traditional ads are being skipped, brands need to earn consumer attention instead of buying it. Smart brands recognise the enormous cultural currency these accounts offer, and, instead of fighting the humour, they’re leveraging it,” says Thomas Walters, Europe CEO and co-founder of global influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.

What started as a niche internet joke has evolved into a force in fashion discourse, not only racking up high engagement but actively driving sales. By refining the essence of subcultures, fashion archetypes and cultural clichés into perfectly curated slideshows, they’re influencing what people buy, wear and talk about. While influencers curate aspirational lifestyles, these memes break them down, reducing trends into bite-sized cultural commentary that resonates across social media.

Why are they popular?

Fashion memes are making the fashion industry seem more self-aware and — crucially — funny. Starter pack meme accounts in particular have made the fashion community accessible to a much bigger audience, says Eva Chen, director of fashion partnerships at Instagram. “[With starter packs], everyone can feel like they’re a part of this fashion industry subculture.”

“Instagram was launched 15 years ago and in that time we’ve seen brand content evolve from being hyper-polished to brands posting looser, cheekier content,” Chen continues. “If that previous shift was about making brands more authentic, [starterpacks] are about deconstructing and making the industry more understandable.”

“A lot of people like visual aids and diagrams. I never retained information at school if someone told it to me, but if I could see it drawn out and explained, it’d be glued in my mind forever,” says starter pack creator @Socks_House_Meeting. The anonymous founder launched the account as a general meme page before pivoting to hyper-specific, London-centric starter pack memes in 2023 after moving to the city. Now, with 124,000 Instagram followers, the page skewers everything from Deptford dates (picture Charles Jeffrey beanies and Malin + Goetz roll-on aftershave) to Southeast London cafés (cue brown Tabi flats and red claw clips). It has collaborated with several brands, including Selfridges, Happy Socks, Netflix and London eatery Jolene.

Billion Dollar Boy’s Walters believes these accounts resonate so strongly because of worsening economic realities. “To understand the rise of starter pack meme pages, you have to consider today’s consumer. Gen Z has less disposable income than previous generations, making them more sceptical of traditional luxury and exclusivity,” he says. “In an oversaturated market where trends move at the speed of culture, humour has become a way to make sense of it all. [These accounts] reflect how consumers navigate the industry’s contradictions, excesses and in-jokes, transforming fashion from something to aspire to into something to laugh with.”

Moreover, not everyone wants to be the face of their content, and that’s another reason meme culture and faceless accounts, from starter pack creators to ‘blue square’ fashion news account @StyleNotCom are thriving. “Not every creator wants to do green screen content or appear on camera,” says Chen. “Memes provide a way to have a voice — one that’s digestible, humorous and doesn’t require them to be front and centre.”

“I used to post a lot on TikTok, but as my audience grew, it started feeling weird to constantly show my face online,” says James Ikin, founder of @ToteBagFanAccount. “So I switched to memes — still poking fun at my friends, colleagues and the different types of people I see around London.” Now, at 40,200 followers, the account’s sharp, hyper-specific humour resonates widely. One standout post — “Beware of the Letterboxd criterion, aesthetic feed, A24 film esoteric baddie… she is not the one” — features Sofia Coppola’s Archive coffee table book and Dr Martens Mary Jane shoes, racking up over 55,000 likes.

From jokes to influence

While fashion meme creators may not see themselves as trendsetters, they can boost trends or vibes as they bubble up, and offer products that people can buy to be part of the aesthetic. “We see ourselves more as observers and reporters — we’re definitely not Sofia Richie Grainge founding quiet luxury over here,” says @TheFakeRothko. “But there is a positive feedback loop: a trend emerges, people talk about it, which makes it bigger, and that in turn fuels even more conversation.”

This shift in engagement is particularly relevant as consumers grow increasingly sceptical of curated brand partnerships.

For @TheFakeRothko, fashion memes exist within the same ecosystem as influencers. “A lot of our content is inspired by influencers, and many of them follow us, so they’re in on the joke,” they say. However, they highlight the growing fatigue around influencer gifting, with audiences becoming increasingly frustrated by high fashion brands handing out expensive freebies — items that regular consumers are then expected to buy.

“Fashion memes also spark discussions about brands in a way that influencers often can’t. Our posts generate engagement and conversations that don’t really happen in influencer comment sections,” says @TheFakeRothko. For example, a post of the viral Alaïa netted ballet flats, with the caption “Let’s leave these in 2024”, was met with thousands of comments of people discussing whether they were oversaturated or not. While another, spoofing the ‘man in finance’ trend, debates the desirability of zip-up hoodies.

Why brands are paying attention

As the luxury market faces a slowdown, understanding and tapping into cultural moments has become more critical to brand success than ever. Meme pages, with their ability to boil down trends and subcultures into viral content, are proving to be powerful tools for influencing consumer behaviour.

“The industry’s openness to parody has become a survival mechanism — if brands can’t laugh at themselves, they risk losing relevance,” Walters explains. “Meme accounts highlight fashion’s absurdities in a way that’s both affectionate and critical, keeping brands in the cultural conversation.”

Brands have traditionally partnered with influencers who post #OOTD content to inspire audiences. Meme accounts take a different approach, tapping humour and cultural commentary to drive mass engagement. This is translating into product discovery and sales — and brands want a slice of the pie.

“@Real_Housewives_of_Clapton [RHOC] absolutely impacts shopping habits — I’ve seen it firsthand through the UGC [user-generated content] people share or tag me in,” says the account’s creator. For example, last September, musician Dan Croll shared a carousel featuring himself sporting a New Yorker tote while eating a salami sandwich. The next slide? A meme from @Real_Housewives_of_Clapton showcasing the exact same tote, labelled “What’s in the tote?” — with salami making an appearance, too. The caption? “So delicious and predictable.” Another user joined in on the fun, posting a can of Perelló Gordal olives alongside a pair of blue Adidas Spezials, captioned simply: “Giving RHOC”, as a nod to the two items featuring regularly in their meme dumps.

@PatheticFashion’s Berragan echoes this sentiment, noting how memes are unexpectedly effective for product discovery. “I get tonnes of people commenting ‘ID?’ on memes to find out what product screenshot I used.”

Brands are taking notice. “A lot of our clients — Salomon, Roa, Asics, Vans — frequently appear on pages like @TemalaPaire and @Yugnat999,” says Radical PR lead Sarah Mahgoub. Some brands have begun leaning into this by gifting meme account holders, she adds. “Industry players following these accounts can be subtly influenced. Strategically, we’ve pushed for this kind of atypical paid content for our clients,” Mahgoub explains.

Considering the sometimes tongue-in-cheek nature of these memes, is there any risk in being featured? Mahgoub doesn’t think so. “It’s rarely negative, and, in my opinion, has a neutral impact. Plus, it’s fleeting — you see it, get the joke (or not) and move on,” she says. Mahgoub adds that starter packs don’t usually critique the product itself, but rather a consumer archetype, which, in reality, exists within a brand’s audience. “Ultimately, being part of the conversation signals a brand’s relevance in fashion culture, which is a good thing.”

Still, not every brand can — or should — lean into memes. “I always urge brands to think about their core identity. Is humour part of it? Do they have a founder who enjoys being cheeky or self-deprecating?” says Chen, who notes that designers like Marc Jacobs and Thom Browne have a sense of humour fitting for the format.

For her, it’s not as simple as just creating content in the starter pack format. It has to feel authentic to the brand. “If it makes sense for your DNA, go for it. But don’t force a trend if it doesn’t align with your brand identity,” Chen says.

Far from being just internet humour, fashion memes are reshaping the way trends are discussed, discovered and even dictated. They challenge the polished, aspirational nature of influencer marketing while offering something just as valuable: cultural relevance. And in an era where attention is the ultimate currency, that might be the most powerful influence of all. “The objects in the memes will evolve, but the format itself feels classic,” Chen continues. “It’s not just a passing trend — it’s a format for cultural commentary that’s here to stay.”

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