Has The “Fake It Till You Make It” Generation Gone Too Far?
With Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” – the story of the infamous fraudster Anna Delvey – due to premiere tomorrow, Elodie Nowinski unpicks how the power of clothing, social media and digital technology has made it easier than ever before to portray the character we desire to become…
The upcoming Inventing Anna series from Netflix lets us deep-dive into the seemingly unbelievable story of a girl who posed as a rich German heiress, stealing and defrauding the rich and famous of their money to live her best life and, according to her, complete an art project. This new show, due to premiere on the 11th of February worldwide, is sure to keep us entertained with its classic story of a con artist. But once we look past all the glitz we can expect from a Shondaland production, we’ll probably have more questions about the world we live in than we will about Anna.
The ‘real’ Anna claims that she did not create such an elaborate lie “just for shopping”. She had a project and she wanted to be taken seriously. To achieve that, she bought – quite literally – a wardrobe that would suit her goals. And if clothes do not make the man, they certainly did transform Anna Sorokin – a 20-something average-looking girl – into Anna Delvey, fake heiress and New York almost-socialite. To make her story believable, she did not just need shiny brands. According to witnesses, she had a certain knack for choosing the ‘right’ ones. Because the socialite world would not have accepted her dressed head-to-toe in any old designer just as any ‘all the gear and no idea’ philistine would have done. She cladded herself in Acne, Celine, Alaïa and other top-notch labels which identified her as a part of the ‘in the know’ clique she was trying infiltrate.
She did not get her knowledge out of thin air; she was a Central Saint Martins drop-out, an ex-intern at a fashion PR company and had been a staff member of the French fashion magazine, Purple. She knew the codes. She used them, it worked, and as she herself said, “it was easy”.
The use of insider short-hand is also apparent when you study another major figure of the women-in-fraud gang; Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO and founder of Theranos. Elizabeth, a brilliant mind who deceived everyone into believing she had a breakthrough technology for medical blood testing, is a classically good-looking, tall, blonde woman. She swapped her corporate America light-coloured suits and big blow dries for black turtleneck tops… as seen on Steve Jobs and the likes. It wasn’t subtle, but it worked as part of her story, even if its biggest impact was on her own psychology.
Signs and the symbolic value of clothing has a lot to do with a form of magic. Marcel Mauss, a French thinker described as the father of ethnology, came up with the word ‘mana’ to describe the magical power of objects. He felt this magic was transferred from people to things and then back onto people, back and forth. This is exactly what is at stake here. For both Anna and Elizabeth, they take the mana from the clothes to project, self-realise and impress their audience.
They use the power of clothing – especially brands or recognisable items like the black turtleneck – to force their way into worlds where they initially do not belong. A Balenciaga piece – especially if not recognisable by everyone – will be identified as such by the people in the right circles, who will then feel the wearer belongs in their circle. The mana of the maison is transferred onto the clothes and then transferred into its wearer. And just like that, the black turtleneck will transform Elizabeth Holmes into a credible tech-genius… Until it unravels.
In both cases, this ‘fake it till you make it’ saga ended up in court, and in Anna’s case, jail. Did the mana run out? Did the clothes finally stop making the (wo)man? They should have known when to stop as their stories are classical tropes in literature and cinema. From the classic theatre plots of Marivaux, Dell’Arte or Shakespeare where valets take the place of their masters, to more recent capers like Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson’s film The Hustle, we could think of hundreds of examples. And, of course there is Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Most of those are comedies, where clothes, disguises and accents are used to laugh and celebrate the heroine’s witty or clueless charm. And it always ends well. Until it doesn’t.
When Andrew Cunanan, the murderer, portrayed by Darren Criss in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, goes out for dinner with the master couturier, he borrows a suit and is given a shiny gold watch to gain access into the life of the man he will eventually kill. In these dramatic depictions, it seems like character believes in his or her own disguise. They do feel the mana. The magic becomes real. They become what they invented.
Beyond these extreme examples, one can look at social media, filled with filters, photoshopping and all sorts of alterations of reality or embellished displays of one’s image or life story. Is it now so easy to stage your own character? Are we all rendered guilty – albeit in different measures – of faking it?
Undoubtedly, I can fake flying in a private jet rather easily. I can even plaster my Instagram feed with Vuitton packaging and Hermès orange shopping bags that I bought online for a hefty price. There’s no need to go though all the trouble Anna went through. Have I not used a cheeky filter on my Bumble profile? That counts. Lash extensions? That counts. Sucking my stomach in for a beach shoot? Does that one count really? I remember crafting a dress from a theatre costume, a discarded ceiling lamp and a piece of curtain – how very Scarlett O’Hara of me – and pretended it was Lanvin when attending a fancy dinner at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Guilty as charged.
But who decides when the charges will hold? Who decides when these transgressions matter? In Anna’s case, the defrauded and the State. In our cases, who are the defrauded? Who saw through the Lanvin-ish dress? To this day, I still look at it, two decades later, thinking it could have been a Lanvin. To me, it was.
Images: Netflix, IMDB, GETTYIMAGES
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s February 2022 issue