In the last few weeks, Bethenny Frankel has been talking a lot about Dior bags on TikTok. The subject itself isn’t unusual: As a reality TV star and entrepreneur, she frequently posts about fashion topics to her 2.4 million followers, including in a feature Ms. Frankel calls “Handbag University,” where she offers reviews and tutorials.
But the tone of Ms. Frankel’s posts about Dior is strikingly different than a typical conversation about luxury goods. Less Vogue and more Jason Bourne.
In a post on Monday, Ms. Frankel suggested there was a cover-up at play.
“I’ve received several Dior bag videos and messages about sightings which are obviously not being reported in the mainstream media,” she said.
The day before, Ms. Frankel said she had been talking to an unnamed source about the Dior bag situation, and that this person — the father of someone Ms. Frankel knows — had passed along top-secret intelligence.
“If our government tries to tell us that they’re from China, that these bags are from China, that we have an issue,” Ms. Frankel said, cryptically, repeating what she said her source had told her, “that would be very alarming.”
Confusion would be understandable to someone coming across just one of the videos, but watch enough of them and you will realize “Dior bags” aren’t always Dior bags. In this case, Ms. Frankel is using the term to refer to the drones that have been reported flying in the skies over the eastern United States and elsewhere.
Who but a fashion obsessive would use a French luxury label as a code word?
“It was in the moment — it wasn’t planned at all,” Ms. Frankel said in a phone interview. “I was just like, ‘The Dior bags are real, they’re in the closet, and management doesn’t want us to know about it.’”
Various governmental agencies have said the sightings, for the most part, are not drones, and a visual analysis by The New York Times indicated most of the sightings over New Jersey were of airplanes rather than drones.
That has not been enough to persuade Ms. Frankel.
She said she initially had only a peripheral interest in the story. Then someone she knows whose father has access to inside information of some sort — and whom she refers to only as “Waterhammer” — reached out to her with a theory explaining the drone sightings. Ms. Frankel posted about it on TikTok in the days before Christmas. But whereas her posts usually get millions of views, she said, the handful of posts in which she talked about drones “were getting 500 views.”
TikTok creators have long complained that the reach of videos has been restricted because they touched on topics the platform didn’t like — “shadow banning,” as the alleged practice has come to be known. It is hard to prove that TikTok is suppressing content, but Ms. Frankel started talking about Dior bags instead of drones in an attempt to get around algorithms and strict content moderation. Such a diversion technique is called “algospeak.”
Ms. Frankel’s fashionable way of talking in code has caught on. Indeed, the reality TV star, her followers and others who want to discuss the drone phenomenon and theorize on social media have created an alternative lexicon built around shopping terminology. “Store management,” to this group, is the U.S. government; Oscar de la Renta products are the shiny objects some have claimed to have observed in the sky; and Prada items are plasmoids, or structures made of plasma and magnetic fields.
Curiously, the largely male audience that listens to podcasters like Joe Rogan and Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL, has also adopted the term and used the hashtag #diorbags in their own videos.
“There were truckers with skull caps and guys on oil rigs talking about Dior bags,” laughed Ms. Frankel.
One group not talking about it apparently is Christian Dior SE, the French company behind the Dior brand. Its representatives did not return a request for comment.
Ms. Frankel hasn’t heard from Dior either, though she wouldn’t be surprised if that were to happen, given that the company may not want its name associated with an online community sharing wild theories about the drones.
“I can’t believe Dior corporate hasn’t called me at this point,” said Ms. Frankel. She clarified: “We’re not mad at Dior. This is just what I used.”
The conversation around “Dior bags” is happening just as another handbag discussion is dominating social media: the look-alike Birkin bag being sold at Walmart.
For anyone not in on algospeak, having a conversation about actual handbags can suddenly lead to confusion. The other day, Ms. Frankel posted about “why the Walmart Birkin is fascinating.” She was quick to clarify, “And this is legitimately about bags — it’s not code.”
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