The High School Teacher Leading Mexico’s ‘Fashion Police’

Mexican politicians have new reason to be cautious.

The fashion police are watching.

Over the last few months, social media users have been hunting for designer labels, luxury watches and other hints of wealth on Mexican politicians, asking — even in a country where many are jaded by corruption — how could public servants afford such apparent luxuries?

“There’s a disconnect between the official discourse and the lifestyle of the politicians,” said Jorge García Orozco, a high school teacher and journalist who has built a growing social media following by showcasing the lifestyles of Mexican officials and questioning how they can afford them on government salaries.

“Many citizens, myself included, were fed up with the ruling political class,” he said.

Garnering over 100,000 followers on his X account, Mr. García Orozco’s work exploded in popularity this summer. Many of his posts started with online tips from people acting as what he called the “fashion police for politicians.”

The attention has also made him enemies. Gerardo Fernández Noroña, a senator who has been featured in his posts, has called some of his work “despicable” and accused him of working for the government’s opponents.

“He said that Mexicans are fed up with braggart politicians who earned a lot of money, were ostentatious, had a lot of advisers, wear designer watches and shoes. And what people want is good public services,” Mr. García Orozco said. He said he remembered thinking then, “That’s what I want for my country.”

He added, “Maybe they changed, but not me.”

Mr. García Orozco, who also teaches high school Spanish in Guadalajara, has spent years digging up public records and investigating officials, recently for the online outlet Eme Equis. (His followers include some students, he said.)

But it was his recent social media posts about politicians’ appearances that struck a chord, especially as Morena has come to dominate all three federal branches of government, in part with mottos of austerity and helping the poor first.

Mr. García Orozco admitted that he has made some inaccurate posts. He recently deleted a claim that a Morena senator was wearing a Cartier watch, and shared her message saying it was a cheaper Anne Klein.

“Because I don’t have an agenda, I gave her a space to reply,” he said.

The surge of interest in his X account is making money for Mr. García Orozco, too, though he declined to say how much. But he insisted his main goal is to show the public how politicians are behaving, saying, “You have to keep questioning the powerful.”

Mr. García Orozco’s prominence rose as he showcased what appeared to be the luxurious lives of Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, then the president of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, and his wife, Diana Karina Barreras, also a lawmaker.

Ms. Barreras and Mr. Gutiérrez Luna did not respond to requests for comment. But last month he claimed that the attention was a campaign by opponents targeting him. He denied some items were expensive and said his critics had not considered that he had worked as a private lawyer for a dozen years.

“You have to distinguish the private from the public part,” he said, adding, “During periods of my life, I wasn’t a public servant.”

Mr. García Orozco acknowledged that he cannot know for sure the origin of items worn by politicians. But he said most scenarios were a bad look.

If the opulent accessories are real, he said, they are incongruous with the typical salary of lawmakers in Mexico’s lower house, about $56,000 a year.

If they are fakes, he said, it raises a different set of uncomfortable questions.

“They are politicians who are supposed to be examples and piracy here is a crime,” he said, adding, “This type of person doesn’t wear knockoffs.”

And when Mexico’s new Supreme Court justices took office this month, Mr. García Orozco showed what he said looked like Salvatore Ferragamo shoes worth $900 on the chief justice, Hugo Aguilar Ortiz.

In July, Mr. Aguilar Ortiz laughed off such suggestions, saying he actually wore “sad Flexi shoes.” Asked about Mr. García Orozco’s allegation, a court spokeswoman sent a screenshot of the Sears website where Flexi shoes sell for roughly $70.