Azure skies, inviting pools, pretty pink cocktails – it’s that time of year when other people’s social media can make us green with envy. And here I sit, leaning back in the buttery leather seat of my private jet and taking a sly sip of chilled champagne.

At the front of the cabin, my designer luggage is carefully stacked, and my rose-pink Chanel classic flap bag is nestled in my lap.

In one fell swoop, I’ve raised the glamor stakes into the stratosphere, hands down every single vacation snap posted by lesser mortals…

But all is not as it seems.

Despite appearances, I am not a member of the 0.1 percent, who live in the lap of total luxury. I traveled here by subway. The ‘champagne’ is cold iced tea and my Chanel bag – although genuine and worth over £4,000 – is rented by BagButler at a cost of £180 for a period of just four days.

And private jet? That’s also true, but it’s going nowhere. I’ve rented it on the tarmac by the hour – just long enough to convince the unsuspecting that I’m the kind of woman for whom private jets and designer clobbers are all perfectly normal.

Welcome to the super inflated world of the fake Instagram post. Of course, these aren’t really tactics used by regular people desperate to keep up with the Joneses, but by the new breed of online marketer, influencers.

In a digital landscape teeming with seemingly glamorous women trying to sell you stuff, an influencer needs to stand out from the crowd, and what better way than to “stage” a lifestyle that screams super-rich and super-successful.

Putting up images like this works by making people pause their daily scrolling to take a closer look, says Katya Varbanova, CEO of Viral Marketing Stars, a company that helps entrepreneurs and businesses grow their brands with social media marketing.

“They do it for the implied status it signals to their followers,” she says. “A luxurious lifestyle attracts attention and those who can’t afford it sometimes ‘fake it till they make it’.

“If you scroll through the Instagram account of any luxury lifestyle influencer, real or fake, the number one comment is often ‘Who is this and how do they afford this life?’ or ‘What does she do? I need to know.”

“It’s a great way to get thousands of strangers to admire them, even if they’re admiring a mask, not the real person.”

What I’m doing is actually common practice. We all know that influencers work by exploiting our envy of their clothes, beauty, clean houses or cute children, and the more we coo over them, the more a company will pay them to promote a product.

The problem is that the online world is almost saturated. The Wall Street Journal recently revealed the stark economics of an influencer career, with 48 per cent of all influencers earning £11,800 or less by 2023 and just 13 per cent attracting more than £78,000 in deals with brands.

So, what do you do to make people want your wonderful life more than your rivals? You mock it.

“So much of what you see on social media is fake to some degree,” says Rhea Freeman, an award-winning social media expert.

“People with super clean and tidy homes that portray the perfect life may just have a clean and tidy corner. They may be beyond miserable, but they put on what they think people want to see because of what it’s likely to produce – more likes and ultimately more money and freebies for those from brands who like what they see and want to collaborate.

“Whether it’s a true depiction of their real life or not is often secondary, especially if the income generated from being an influencer is significant to them or it’s their main job.”

Do we care that they lie to us? Enough, it seems, to ramp up the exposures—often of genuine influencers who “nominate” others in videos—that have come thick and fast in recent years.

For example, Australian actress and model Suzan Mutesi was accused of lying about boarding a real private jet in 2022 when viewers discovered it was actually parked in a hangar.

Ahem, much like mine is today.

In fact, it was relatively quick and easy to set up this subterfuge. All it took was a few well-placed phone calls to borrow and rent the fashions, and indeed the plane. The £1,600 vintage Chanel brooch came from Susan Caplan. Her pieces can be hired from as little as £15 at hurrcollective.com. I rented the white Lady Dior mini bag from Christian Dior (£175 for four days from BagButler) and also the bright orange Aspinal of London bag (available from By Rotation from £20 per day). My Chanel-inspired ballet flats are from Dune and cost £75, and my designer-looking turquoise fitted dress was actually from Karen Millen (£75.65).

Then there was the jet, which costs from £1,000 a day. Add in a professional hair and make-up team (up to £750) to make this 40-year-old mum and housewife look like the kind of woman who can sway your buying decisions and I defy anyone to tell me anything but the ‘real thing’ “‘. Yes, the outlay is big, but if it can generate brand business worth thousands of pounds by getting you followers, then it’s an investment worth making.

The private jet image, with its connotations not just of wealth but of a global elite – of lavish holidays and VIP treatment – has become something of a stock in the trade. Just typing #jetlife into Google reveals a page’s worth of beautiful women with impossibly contoured cheekbones recreating the scene I myself easily staged.

My Learjet is hired from Shoot Aviation in Berkshire, who provide sets for Bond films and music videos, but I don’t need to have hired an actual aircraft. Warehouses have popped up in the UK with fake jet interiors where wannabe influencers can have their photos taken – complete with leather-look seats, fake jet windows and the obligatory glass of champagne. In America, where demand is even greater, you can rent a fake private jet space from $44 an hour.

In fact, the number of people who fake it is staggering.

“If by fake you don’t mean real jets, not real bags and not real holidays, then in my experience 25 percent of total luxury lifestyle content is fake,” says Katya.

“But if you also include the influencers who buy their luxury lifestyle with loans and credit cards, hoping to get rich one day, I’d raise that number to 40 percent. The creators of ‘fake it ’til you make it’ tend to experience short-term success, whether it’s money, fame or status, but they tend not to sustain it.’

I’m not immune to Instagram glamor by any means. Like many cut-throat moms (I have a 15-year-old and a ten-year-old), I like to “see how the other half lives” and follow a number of gorgeous women modeling the latest cashmere loungewear or posing in sports cars on their way to somewhere more glamorous than my kitchen .

And yes, I’ve bought the occasional bag or pair of shoes because the person showing it off on social media looks like the kind of woman I sometimes dream of being.

But can I be a fake influencer myself? There’s no denying the initial excitement. Climbing into a private jet feels like an experience in itself, even if it’s not headed for Monaco. The interior is pristine with cream leather seats and an extendable mahogany table. I drape myself in my chair, making sure an empty bottle of Moet et Chandon is in sight, and the Daily Mail photographer snaps away.

I move around the jet, look out the window at the – er – gray parking lot outside and pretend I’m looking at clouds. The clothes are changed, more pictures are taken. And for the first 20 minutes or so, I’m almost taken in by myself. But as the minutes pass, I find myself rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of it all.

The jet is going nowhere. It stands still on a rainy tarmac airfield. The Chanel bag is returned to the rental shop together with the jewellery. And tonight, instead of landing in Monaco, I will return to my house to make my children pop and mash.

And it’s not just the craziness of all this dressing up, the obvious attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the viewers. “It’s mentally exhausting to wear a mask every day of your life,” says Katya. At least potentially, it is mentally damaging as well. “If your audience falls in love with a fake version of you, deep down you’ll always wonder if the real you is lovable.”

I wonder if I have succeeded in faking my glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle?

I sent Katya some photos from the jet I took on my phone, surrounded by bags, Moet, luggage and in my fur.

Her response? “Some of the pictures may be believable to someone new to social media. But I ask myself why would your luggage be next to your seat? Usually, on private jets, luggage is stored in the front or back of the aircraft.

“The picture with the Hermes lookalike bag can be real. It’s hard to tell because of how you sit, which will raise fewer questions! Usually, the more the picture shows, the bigger the margin of error makes it more likely to be identified as a fake set.

“I think it is highly likely that someone without much media experience could believe these images are real!”

As for tips on how to spot the real from the fake, Katya says there are things we can look out for. ‘Check for bot followers. If you see a large number of “egg” accounts (those that display an empty oval instead of a profile photo), chances are they may be bots. Another trick is to upload the influencer’s image to Google image search, which will tell you if it was posted by someone else before them.

“When you look at a real influencer, you tend to get tons of real inspiration or education. But when you see a fake one, they’ll often say a lot without saying anything. Keep an eye out for that. And follow creators for at least two years before you make big buying decisions inspired by them. Keeping a lie for that long is much harder than for a few months.’

As I pack away the last of the rented high fashion, I’m inclined to agree. Back to the real world it is, and my usual holiday posts of the family scoffing ice cream cones by the sea at Frinton.