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Trends have always been started by those in the spotlight. Think of high school: If the cool girls are wearing T-shirts with two holes cut out of the chest ( Mean

Girls, anyone?), it’s only a matter of time before their admirers make a date with a Gap basic tee and a pair of scissors. Back in the day when television set the trends, we credited (er, cursed?) The

Simple Life stars Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie for making velour track suits a thing. The screen size may have changed, but the trickledown effect is the same.

The big difference is advertising dollars. Your school’s Queen B wasn’t getting paid to sport a Von Dutch trucker hat—she truly liked it (or at least she thought she did). And in the early days of social media, we liked and followed based on an authentic appreciation of someone’s personal sense of style. Now, sponsored posts are an influencer’s bread and butter, often commanding price tags from $1,000 for more modest influencers to six figures if your last name is Kardashian or Jenner. Shop-my-feed apps like Snapppt and Like to Know It offer more revenue potential for style stars who earn a commission on items sold. Do hefty paycheques impact the genuine endorsement of a product? “I want to believe that no matter what the brand is or how much money it has, if it’s not a fit, it’s not going to earn that place in your feed,” says Toronto-based blogger and Instagram influencer Krystin Lee, who also works as a social-media strategist for