I Do All My Best Shopping on Instagram

The ads are too good!

I Do All My Best Shopping on Instagram

It started with two words: washable silk. I was on Instagram—of course I was on Instagram—and between the conveyer belt of Stories, I noticed a recurrent ad from a sleepwear brand. I must have scrolled past ads for these PJs at least a dozen times, but now I paused, holding a finger down on the screen to consider them. The pajamas did look soft. And soft seemed good. It was late April, a few weeks after I had celebrated a birthday in the middle of a pandemic. Washable silk was not an actual answer to a single genuine problem I could think of, but now that I was spending most hours in elasticized waists, it seemed like a reasonable treat. I swiped up on the PJs, selected a color labeled “cloud,” and paid for it in a few clicks. That was the beginning.

Like most people fortunate enough to be able to work from home, I spent much of April indoors, staring at Instagram. And since almost everyone I follow also remained inside, I started paying more attention to the ads that broke up the monotony of basically scrolling through a constant reflection of my own situation. Ads for a curvaceous couch from a cool brand whose logo was all lowercase, ads for a rainbow selection of sweatsuits, ads for candles, colorful sheet pans, and wireless bralettes. I saw an ad for socks and wondered, “Should I have a favorite sock brand?” I do now! It’s Bombas. Some of the brands whose advertisements I saw were for products I was familiar with, like Great Jones' cookware or Hill House's irresistible nap dresses. Others were independent labels that made just a few necklaces or pairs of ballet flats. Coming across them felt almost spontaneous, like wandering into a boutique on a whim and finding it stocked with a perfect selection of sweaters.

Had Instagram's ads been this good from the start? Or was I so desperate to look at something on a screen that was not me, via Zoom, that they seemed that much attractive? I called Christina Cua, the director of product marketing on Instagram’s business team to find out. 

Cua told me that her team had spent a lot of time working with businesses in the beginning of the pandemic to make sure that even smaller companies had access to the kind of tools that make people like me double-back on an ad for bath soaks. “We’re also seeing a bunch of businesses that have had to pivot with the lockdown, a lot of companies have amped up their digital presence,” which has translated into a bigger investment in ads overall, she added. (When I asked about her own Instagram shopping, Cua said she too had given in to the call of the Hill House's nap dress, which became a phenomenon in 2020 for obvious reasons.)

Lunya Washable Silk Set

The Athena Nap Dress

Here is where I note that I know Instagram is part of a behemoth corporation, and it does not exist to facilitate social media meet-cutes between me and makers of fine soap. It wants me to shop and then it wants to collect data about that shopping, and I do and it does. In December, I adopted a rescue pup and no sooner was he home than I was getting advertisements for dog beds and expensive dog knitwear. When a friend told me she was pregnant and I searched once or twice for a nice present to send, Instagram started serving me ads for ‘millennial’ cribs. (It soon must have realized I was not pregnant and the ads disappeared.)

The degree of precision that the algorithm has developed creeps me—and lots of other users—out. But I also kind of like it. I like the tasteful mesh bras that I have since ordered in bulk. I love Arq’s cultish high-rise underwear. Kate McLeod’s moisturizing “stones”—best described as solid sticks of butter that melt on contact with skin—were a revelation. The entire experience of shopping via Instagram reminded me of one of the best pre-pandemic activities: the mindless browse. It’s hard to believe now but once upon a time, in between errands downtown or on a walk home, I would walk into a store for no reason and just look around. No toilet paper to procure, no list of groceries to shop for once a week. No hand sanitizer station. Just a store full of beautiful things, and me, with an hour to kill before the dentist.

With that kind of shopping off the table, Instagram is an inexhaustible substitute. Has its knack for knowing the precise pair of sweatpants I most crave sometimes concerned me? Sure. But so far, I have not disturbed enough to resist the temptation of a Pangaia sweatsuit.

https://twitter.com/mattiekahn/status/1330634599635021824

A few months ago, I took the habit public. “Want a gift guide that’s just a list of things people succumbed to via Instagram ads that turned out to be great,” I tweeted. No one supplied quite that, but dozens of people responded with their picks: Third Love bras, Misen knives, the Great Jones sheet pan that I also own (and love). Someone described Arq underwear as her “life’s passion.” Swimwear brands were hit-or-miss, but people were wild for their Brooklinen sheets, and I got two recommendations for Olive & June nail polish. All told, I got at least 50 different recommendations, most of which retail for between a few bucks and about $75.

Great Jones Holy Sheet

Arq High-Rise Undies

When I was little, my mother would sometimes pick me up from school and whisk me off for what she called an “in-and-out” afternoon. It started as an excuse to take care of a bunch of the kinds of errands that seem to pile up with small children—store credits that had to be spent, exchanges of one pair of shoes for a size up, new dance leotards.

But somehow, the concept morphed, and it came to mean instead the experience of just looking around for fun. Walking in and out of stores, not in pursuit of something in particular, not planning to shop—just the two of us, laughing in dressing rooms, stopping for hot chocolate with extra whipped cream between excursions. Sometimes I got new clothes. Once I got a glow-in-the-dark plastic handbag. Most of the time, we just looked around. It wasn’t about the actual acquisitions (although I did love that bag); it was more like a little vacation. A few hours or even a few minutes of hanging out, letting ourselves imagine just how good life would be in a bandana-print tankini.

Until that kind of shopping is possible, I will accept this social media-mediated substitute and be grateful for it. When it’s time to go outside again, I’ll be here—in washable-silk pajamas.

Mattie Kahn is Glamour's culture director. 

This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Mattie Kahn