Kristen D’Arcy is True Religion’s first-ever chief marketing officer. The brand hired her specifically to “unleash marketing” for the apparel brand, D’Arcy told attendees at the 2025 Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas in March.
Marketing initiatives giving a boost to the brand include having both paid and organic content from celebrities through its “Team True” program and “Own Your True” campaigns.
True Religion launched in 2002 and made a name for itself as a premium denim brand. The brand declared bankruptcy in 2017, and current CEO Mike Michael Buckley joined the brand in 2019 to turn it around. This included adding new talent, overhauling the product and prominently displaying its logo on its apparel, D’Arcy said.
Now, D’Arcy is in the picture to pour gasoline on the business. True Religion has doubled its business in the past four years and it is now the most profitable it has ever been in its 23 year history, she said.
Own Your True platform
True Religion recently launched an “Own Your True” platform which includes 100 celebrities, including athletes and music artists, who routinely publish content about the brand. For six months, the brand gifts its latest products to the celebrities and they post on social media with content such as walking out of tunnel or onto the red carpet, getting ready to go out or unwinding after an event — all while wearing True Religion products. This creates a steady pipeline of content from influential people.
“We really want to focus on celebrating people who are bold, who walk with confidence. Because that’s exactly what our product is,” D’Arcy said.
Layered on top of this, True Religion taps into more prominent celebrities for paid influencer partnerships, such as with Brazilian popstar Anitta.
In Q1 2025, True Religion launched a video campaign with Anitta, showcasing the singer and how she “Owns her true.” Overall, the brand is pleased with the results.
“It’s been a great start to the year thanks to this new platform and the campaigns that follow. Tremendous amount of engagement in social. Tremendous amount of press,” D’Arcy said. “Most importantly, in a really tough Q1 in retail, our business is up double digits versus last year at the same time.”
How True Religion measures UGC success
Another recent example is content from rapper Sexy Red. On March 25, True Religion debuted its content with the rapper, but did not put any extra media spend behind it. The artist also posted on her social media accounts with behind-the-scene looks from the photo shoot and her experience with True Religion products.
“It was a 70% increase in traffic yesterday,” D’Arcy said. “So the campaign goes live across all channels —she posts — and then like wildfire you would immediately see these traffic increases.”
Plus, 90% of those web visitors were new to the True Religion brand and it gained 200 new social media followers in just a few hours of the content going live.
The brand also evaluates its Team True content by measuring the increase in web traffic and sales lift for the specific products the celebrity posts about. It also looks at softer metrics such as social media comments, shares and follower increase.
On average, product detail pages that have user generated content from its Team True celebrities have a 60-80% higher add-to-cart ratio than pages with normal UGC, she said.
“The value in those people partnering with us is tremendous in moving the business forward,” D’Arcy said.
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