Last March, we wondered why a group of widely recognized bloggers were all suddenly wearing the same exact dress over the span of a few days. It quickly came out that this was no coincidence. Rather, the bloggers were paid to post #OOTDs while donning a specific dress from Lord & Taylor's Design Lab. However, the 50 (!) bloggers that participated didn't (at the time) disclose the fact that these were sponsored posts — which is completely off-limits , according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission 's guidelines for digital advertising Today, Lord & Taylor settled with the FTC for an undisclosed sum over charges that the retailer misrepresented its campaign by failing to clearly indicate that these posts were sponsored. The settlement requires Lord & Taylor to clearly designate any native advertising as such (and ensure that any influencers do, too).The FTC's complaint claims that the campaign's 50 influencers were not only gifted the Design Lab dress in question, but were also compensated "in amounts ranging from $1,000 to $4,000" by Lord & Taylor for a single Instagram post, which the retailer approved copy for. (According to the FTC, none of the original caption text supplied by these influencers made note of the sponsored nature of the posts — nor did Lord & Taylor add the disclosure when approving the copy.)The agency was reportedly first alerted of a possible misstep when Nylon's website ran a story paid for and reviewed by Lord & Taylor without designating it as an ad (along with an Instagram post that had no indication of sponsorship), according to Reuters . Despite all of this, the #DesignLab campaign appears to have been successful in reaching a large audience: The dress not only sold out, but these sponsored posts reached 11.4 million Instagram users, says the FTC.The retailer clarified that it obviously wasn't intentional: "Lord & Taylor is deeply committed to our customers and we never sought to deceive them in any way, nor would we ever. In the FTC's consent order announced today, there is no finding of wrongdoing whatsoever," read a statement Lord & Taylor provided to Refinery29. "We cooperated fully with the FTC's inquiry into the marketing of this dress and have of course agreed to uphold the current version of the guidelines. The FTC has changed its guidelines since last year and we applaud the new guidelines that clarify the rules."Plus, when the retailer found out that its Design Lab campaign didn't abide by the FTC's rules at the time the campaign was released, it "took immediate action" and had the influencers featured in the campaign edit the captions to make clear that the posts were paid for (which you yourself , if you go back a solid 50 weeks in their feeds).