Or when excessive marketing becomes off putting

Are you a woman with an Instagram account? Then the chances are high that you’ve seen an advert or some affiliated content for Sezane. Not Cezanne the Post Impressionist painter, but rather the clothing shop worn by seemingly every woman influencer in both hemispheres. Founded in 2013 by Morgane Sezalory, the online clothing brand bills itself as ‘the cult Parisian wardrobe’. It heavily capitalises on its Parisian origins, and the eternal appeal of ‘French girl’ cool. In clothing, and online, to be French is to be chic, to be a French girl is to be cool. Sezane promises to give us unfortunate souls not lucky enough to be born in France, let alone Paris, a bite of the baguette.

Now, I’m not immune to this. I’d love to pretend I’m too cool or disinterested to see the appeal, but purely aesthetically, I can understand why so many people are drawn to Sezane. Their clothes have a timeless quality, mixed with a sort of easy to wear vibe which makes them very attractive. You’d just throw them on and be instantly chic and comfortable – or so they want you to think. The prices are expensive enough to give the impression of luxury and high quality, and you’re encouraged to view them as investment pieces.

What of the company itself? Sezane is a certified BCorp, since 2021, scoring 82.6, just over the 80 required for certification. This is a great way for companies to demonstrate their commitment to ethical business practices. Some readers may recall the 2022 scandal (yes, that’s after BCorp verification) when Sezane was accused by the INPI in Mexico of exploiting the image of Indigenous women, for which founder Sezalory apologised on her personal Instagram. The post has either been deleted or never made it beyond her stories, as I can no longer find it. Sezane’s website also has an extensive section on their sustainable commitments. They’re clearly trying, and want to be seen to be trying. I do find statements like ‘80% of leather tanning is done in a responsible way’ strange. Isn’t this just an admission that you’re doing 20% of it irresponsibly, and you know it? There were probably more pragmatic but authentic ways to frame this. So, giving them the benefit of some doubts, it seems likely that Sezane is making an effort to balance the inherently unsustainable aims of a mass clothing company with a desire to be (or be seen as being) ethical and environmentally friendly.

Thus, we come at last to my main problem with Sezane. They are everywhere. You simply cannot escape them. They don’t even have an Australian website, and even down here every influencer seems to have a closet full of Sezane ‘staples’. You can tell when a new collection has arrived because suddenly every woman online will be wearing the same pieces. And they all have to keep up the pretence that it is a piece they just happen to have. Yet, I have never actually met a woman who owns Sezane clothes. Perhaps it is because of the cost of shipping to Australia, but their online ubiquity is not matched by the reality I see around me.

The fact that every time I open Instagram I see Sezane triggers a kind of childish stubbornness in me. If everyone else is wearing it, why would I want to? I don’t want my wardrobe to be identical to everyone else’s! Hence I feel their aggressive marketing is ultimately counter-productive. By over-saturating my Instagram feed with their products, I am dissuaded from buying them. No matter how lovely the people wearing them look. If by contrast they were slightly more selective, not to say exclusive, but rather they simply reduced the number of influencers they market with, the brand and those partnerships might feel more authentic, and I would be more inclined to buy into them.

This oversaturation also raises a question which you might have noticed in the screenshot above: how overwhelmingly white these influencers are. I can’t say they are exclusively white, because some of the women of colour I follow or come across also wear Sezane, but it is noticeable that they seem to be in the minority. They don’t have that many models in their look-books, but they do feature black models. So perhaps that’s more a reflection on the racism of the Instagram algorithm than it is the brand itself.

I don’t own any Sezane, and at this point that doesn’t seem likely to change. My teenage inclination to go against the flow just can’t be won over by such inescapable marketing! Perhaps with time I’ll come to relax on this, but for now I can’t feel I’m rewarding their efforts. Thrifting wouldn’t event completely side-step this issue. So I guess for now I’ll just have to aim for West Country-Oxford-Melbourne Girl chic, and say goodbye to any hopes of being French girl chic!

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Have you ever had the experience of being put off an item you essentially would like by the marketing? I’d love to hear any examples and stories you have, so please do share them in a comment! Thank you for reaching the end of this Instagram inspired rant!