The Advent Calendars That Divide Us
It wouldn't be Christmastime without some TikTok advent calendar drama!
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LVMH chief Bernard Arnault just overtook Elon Musk as the world’s richest person. Musk’s wealth took a hit because Tesla’s share price has tumbled more than 50 percent since mid-April, when Musk made a hostile bid to take over Twitter. Now, investors are concerned about a host of issues, among them how Musk seems to be distracted from his Tesla duties by constantly shit-posting on the platform.
But Arnault has something else working in his favor this holiday season, something to pad his pocket book like the sturdy cup of a Victoria’s Secret bra: the Dior advent calendar.
The year 2022 may go down in history as the one during which LVMH-owned Dior decided to sell an advent calendar — yes, as in “a glorified collection of boxes with trinkets inside” — for $3,500. This is more than four times the cost of the $825 Chanel one that went viral last year for containing stickers and press-on tattoos. It is also only a little less than what you’d earn working for three months full-time on federal minimum wage.
Related in Back Row: TikTok Fashion Vigilantes Should Have the Establishment On Edge
In an entirely predictable turn of events, this Dior AC is getting roasted across the internet because, as it turns out, yet another a luxury brand charging an exorbitant price for a highly seasonal and disposable item has failed to deliver on its value in the eyes of people seeing it for the first time on TikTok. It’s not like those tiny boxes contain $1,100 “Dior Vibe” T-shirts or $2,050 skorts.
On December 9, popular lifestyle creator Jackie Aina posted a video to TikTok in which she employs a box cutter to open a sturdy shipping container marked “fragile.” Inside, she finds a wooden box branded “Dior” from which she exhumes the calendar, thus jumpstarting her public relationship to the product and the public’s new annual tradition of singling out one of these to collectively drag.
Aina is an excellent tour guide for this experience not only because this isn’t sponsored content — she bought the AC — but also because she comes across like someone who knows the brand and wants to like this thing. Unsurprisingly, it fails to live up to expectations naturally stemming from the $3,500 price. A price that says “no one at Christian Dior has used the internet since November 30, 2021.”
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I compiled lists of pros and cons of the AC based on Aina’s TikToks:
PROS
The AC itself appears to be large, heavy, and cumbersome. If you had to set it on the roof of your car on the side of the highway, it would not — presumably like Chanel’s flimsy 2021 AC — blow immediately into oncoming traffic. It is also so house-shaped and grand that it looks like its own Zillow listing.
The material used to construct the AC looks thick and durable, like it could survive a Nor’easter if one of those old money types in New England chose to repurpose it as a birdhouse or squirrel’s quarters.
The day 4 box contains a large candle that you could probably use pretty effectively as a weapon if a burglar broke into your home while you were watching Netflix. The scent is 30 Montaigne, and Dior sells one of these on its own for $95. If you want a three-wicked “giant” model, that’ll run you $630.
This has nothing to do with Dior but the brand benefits from adjacency to the interior of Aina’s home, dreamily cast in shades of white and cream with perhaps the best lighting seen outside of a Steven Meisel photo shoot.
CONS
Day 2 contains a tiny bar of soap, like the plastic-wrapped ones you find in the bathrooms at chain hotels. Aina says it smells good but also that it’s going to the guest bathroom.
Eight of the boxes contain sample-sized fragrances. On Day 11’s unboxing, Zaina says the four tiny samples she’s mined so far “don’t even count because, lovely scents aside, these come as free gifts with purchase if you shop on Dior.com.”
Day 9 is another tiny bar of soap that Zaina says “smells a little generic.”
Day 6 is a lid to the aforementioned large candle. When Zaina opens it, she seems perplexed, like she is unsure of what it is, not because it’s just a shiny metal disk, but because she can’t believe this would even be one of the items.
By the time Zaina gets to Day 11’s unboxing, she says, “So far I have to say, it is what it is, but it ain’t that great.” That day’s box seems promising (Zaina: “it’s got some girth”) but turns out to be… another candle. She says, “This smells really freaking good,” but notes the petite size. Don’t count on being able to weaponize this one in an emergency.
Day 13 is another shiny circle-shaped piece of metal that Zaina deduces is a coaster instead of a lid. (I had to research designer candle accessories to confirm this but it’s apparently a coaster specifically for a candle.)
By Day 14’s unboxing, Zaina says, “You know the rules — if today’s box sucks we open another box.” After Day 14 produces a tiny fragrance, she goes for the much larger Day 15 and gets a perfume in the same scent as one of the bars of soap.
Zaina will continue opening the tiny drawers of the AC and documenting it for TikTok but the Dior website has a list of all the items it contains, which I’ve pulled below. The bold text is my notes on what each item cost:
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