Four women standing in front of a caravan in the desert appear the first time I open the White Fox app. The cowboy hats, micro-shorts, low-slung belts and knee-high boots suggest they’re on their way to Coachella. The text reads: “Your new wardrobe just dropped,” alluding to the “hundreds of styles” the online-only Australian fast-fashion brand says it releases every week.
The image encapsulates the strategy that has made White Fox a favourite among teenage girls and twentysomethings across Australia, the United Kingdom and United States. It positions White Fox as the brand hot girls wear to cool parties, and generates fear of missing out in the process.
Jennifer Piña, of influencer marketing agency Magic Links, says White Fox stands out from other fast fashion brands like Boohoo and Shein “because their curation is much cleaner … and they work with aspirational creators who are also getting deals from luxury and mid-market brands”.
White Fox advertisements – with their provocative poses – adorn buses and billboards all over Sydney, London and Los Angeles. This gets the message to tweens sitting in cars with their parents, but beneath the most visible aspect of their strategy is a huge network of online influencer-driven marketing.
Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning
The brand’s founders, Daniel and Georgia Contos, learned about the power of influencers early. The business started as an eBay store in 2013. When Georgia included a photograph of Kim Kardashian wearing a previously unpopular dress in a listing, it sold for more than double her purchase price.
“I was so inspired by the influence of celebrity style and the impact it could have on sales that I knew I had to take it to the next level,” she toldForbes in 2020(Daniel and Georgia Contos declined to be interviewed for this story).
Twelve years later, in certain demographics, the brand feels omnipresent. They have amassed 2.6 million followers on Instagram and 1.1 million on TikTok. White Fox hoodies, instantly identifiable by their bubble-font logo, are a must-have item for teenage girls. Their bandage dresses, triangle bikinis and track pants are worn by celebrities Emily Ratajkowski and Hailey Bieber, alongside Love Island UK winner Gabby Allen and Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause.
The expense of collaborating with influencers is hard to pinpoint, but Piña says someone with 1 million followers typically earns $16,000 ($10,000 US) for a 30 second video. Brent Coker, a lecturer in viral marketing at the University of Melbourne, estimates a $25,000 budget might be enough to engage three influencers with 50,000 followers each. Since influencer marketing is now well established, Piña says brands can determine how each view translates to their bottom line, and tailor their strategies accordingly.
White Fox also throws star-studded parties and brings “content creators” on glamorous tripsincluding to a mansion at Coachellaand toSydney to experience an Australian summer.
“They give everyone a little bit of Fomo,” says Piña. “And play to that Australian mystique and fitness.” Ever self-aware and shrewd, White Fox also sells a line of fake tan products calledBaddest.
Sign up toSaved for Later
Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips
after newsletter promotion
Social media strategy sets White Fox apart from their competitors by projecting a highly aspirational lifestyle, but their manufacturing model comes from fast fashion’s playbook. Selling dresses for $89.95 and tops for $49.95 makes White Fox more expensive than ultra-fast fashion brands Shein and Temu, but a similar price point to Zara and H&M.
The brand has faced similar criticism to other fast fashion companies. In 2023, customers criticised a video the companyposted to Instagram storiesshowing garbage bags filled with garments in their warehouse. In 2024, Baptist World Aid said White Foxcould not be included in their annual ethical fashion report, because they did not provide information about their manufacturing practices.
Poor customer service has been an issue too. At the end of 2023, a Black Friday sale created a backlog of orders so big, they cancelled their Boxing Day promotions. At the time, Daniel Contos told A Current Affair: “We are doing everything we can to get [orders] out as quick as possible. We’re learning as we go and yes even though we’re 10 years in … as we scale with growth, there’s always going to be learning curves.”
Despite criticism, their growth has been meteoric. In 2019, White Fox launched in the US, and three years later they expanded to the UK. In 2024, across the White FoxAustraliaandUnited Stateswebsites, they recorded almost US$73.8m in sales. At the start of April, White Fox bought a five-storey commercial office building in Sydney’sRosebery for A$70m, while the personal property portfolio of Georgia and Daniel Contos (who are 33 and 34) includesfive mansions in the upmarket Sydney suburb of Vaucluseworth an estimated A$150m.
The volume of content shared across White Fox social media platforms has also grown explosively. Data from the consultantsCreatorIQsuggests White Fox posted almost 25,000 times in 2023 – about five times more than in 2018.
While some of this marketing is paid for, some is customer generated. Customers are encouraged to post photos of themselves wearing White Fox, adding to the brand’s reach. Sharing pictures also creates a sense of community for their young buyers –often described as the loneliest generation.
The brand also engages aspiring influencers under their “White Fox University” program. Student customerswith at least 2,000 followersapply to become ambassadors, and those who are successful receive a free outfit every month, along with discount codes to share on social media.
Eva Harkin, a 23-year-old film and digital media graduate from the University of Galway, has been a White Fox ambassador for eight months. “If you told me a year ago that I would be working with one of my favourite brands I wouldn’t believe you,” she says.
Harkin has almost 7,000 Instagram followers, and estimates she spends about 10 hours a month planning, editing and shooting White Fox content. “I love going to the events and getting to meet other creators,” she says. “In the future I would like to be doing content creation full-time.”
Coker describes the White Fox University program as “Hotmail viral”, referring to the email service popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “[Hotmail] went viral simply by including a link at the bottom of every email that said ‘refer a friend and get a free something’.
“Where there’s an incentive for people to spread the message – like free clothes – they’ll sell your products for you,” he says. “It’s quite clever actually.”