In the last few weeks, Bethenny Frankel has been talking a lot about Dior bags on TikTok. The subject itself isn’t unusual: As a reality TV star and entrepreneur, she frequently posts about fashion topics to her 2.4 million followers, including in a feature Ms. Frankel calls “Handbag University,” where she offers reviews and tutorials.

But the tone of Ms. Frankel’s posts about Dior is strikingly different than a typical conversation about luxury goods. Less Vogue and more Jason Bourne.

In a post on Monday, Ms. Frankel suggested there was a cover-up at play.

“I’ve received several Dior bag videos and messages about sightings which are obviously not being reported in the mainstream media,” she said.

The day before, Ms. Frankel said she had been talking to an unnamed source about the Dior bag situation, and that this person — the father of someone Ms. Frankel knows — had passed along top-secret intelligence.

“If our government tries to tell us that they’re from China, that these bags are from China, that we have an issue,” Ms. Frankel said, cryptically, repeating what she said her source had told her, “that would be very alarming.”

Confusion would be understandable to someone coming across just one of the videos, but watch enough of them and you will realize “Dior bags” aren’t always Dior bags. In this case, Ms. Frankel is using the term to refer to the drones that have been reported flying in the skies over the eastern United States and elsewhere.

Who but a fashion obsessive would use a French luxury label as a code word?

“It was in the moment — it wasn’t planned at all,” Ms. Frankel said in a phone interview. “I was just like, ‘The Dior bags are real, they’re in the closet, and management doesn’t want us to know about it.’”

Various governmental agencies have said the sightings, for the most part, are not drones, and a visual analysis by The New York Times indicated most of the sightings over New Jersey were of airplanes rather than drones.

That has not been enough to persuade Ms. Frankel.

She said she initially had only a peripheral interest in the story. Then someone she knows whose father has access to inside information of some sort — and whom she refers to only as “Waterhammer” — reached out to her with a theory explaining the drone sightings. Ms. Frankel posted about it on TikTok in the days before Christmas. But whereas her posts usually get millions of views, she said, the handful of posts in which she talked about drones “were getting 500 views.”

TikTok creators have long complained that the reach of videos has been restricted because they touched on topics the platform didn’t like — “shadow banning,” as the alleged practice has come to be known. It is hard to prove that TikTok is suppressing content, but Ms. Frankel started talking about Dior bags instead of drones in an attempt to get around algorithms and strict content moderation. Such a diversion technique is called “algospeak.”

Ms. Frankel’s fashionable way of talking in code has caught on. Indeed, the reality TV star, her followers and others who want to discuss the drone phenomenon and theorize on social media have created an alternative lexicon built around shopping terminology. “Store management,” to this group, is the U.S. government; Oscar de la Renta products are the shiny objects some have claimed to have observed in the sky; and Prada items are plasmoids, or structures made of plasma and magnetic fields.

Curiously, the largely male audience that listens to podcasters like Joe Rogan and Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL, has also adopted the term and used the hashtag #diorbags in their own videos.

“There were truckers with skull caps and guys on oil rigs talking about Dior bags,” laughed Ms. Frankel.

One group not talking about it apparently is Christian Dior SE, the French company behind the Dior brand. Its representatives did not return a request for comment.

Ms. Frankel hasn’t heard from Dior either, though she wouldn’t be surprised if that were to happen, given that the company may not want its name associated with an online community sharing wild theories about the drones.

“I can’t believe Dior corporate hasn’t called me at this point,” said Ms. Frankel. She clarified: “We’re not mad at Dior. This is just what I used.”

The conversation around “Dior bags” is happening just as another handbag discussion is dominating social media: the look-alike Birkin bag being sold at Walmart.

For anyone not in on algospeak, having a conversation about actual handbags can suddenly lead to confusion. The other day, Ms. Frankel posted about “why the Walmart Birkin is fascinating.” She was quick to clarify, “And this is legitimately about bags — it’s not code.”

The number of felony assaults and rapes in New York City rose last year even as the overall crime rate fell, Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said on Monday.

Shootings fell 7 percent last year compared with 2023, to 903, and there were 377 homicides reported in 2024, the lowest number of killings since 2020, according to police figures. The number of burglaries, robberies, car thefts and larcenies also dropped in 2024, Commissioner Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams said during a news conference.

But two crime categories — sexual assaults and felony assaults, a major crime category defined as an attack in which a dangerous weapon is used or a serious injury results — continued to buck the trend. There were 29,417 felony assaults last year, the highest number in at least 24 years and a 5 percent increase from 2023.

For the mayor, the decline in several major crime categories was an opportunity to tout his policies at a time when he is trying to persuade New Yorkers to re-elect him, even as he faces criminal prosecution and a perception that the leadership of the Police Department descended into dysfunction under his watch.

“I was clear from Day 1, not only on the campaign trail, but when I became mayor, the prerequisite to our prosperity is public safety, and I was committed to driving down crime,” Mayor Adams said. “We’re the safest big city in America. The numbers are clear.”

The department said it had received 1,748 complaints of sexual assault, nearly half of which were connected to domestic violence incidents, Commissioner Tisch said.

The number of rapes was the highest since 2020, though it was slightly lower than in 2019, when the department received 1,771 complaints of sexual assault, according to department figures. About a quarter of the rapes reported last year occurred in the Bronx.

The announcement of a drop in crime comes as headlines have been dominated by terrifying incidents, such as the killing of Debrina Kawam, a 57-year-old woman who was burned to death on the F train three days before Christmas, and the shooting of 10 people outside a club in Queens on New Year’s Day. Mr. Adams acknowledged on Monday that reporting a drop in most crime categories may not comfort many New Yorkers who are fearful of being randomly attacked on the subway or on the street.

“These high-profile random acts of violence have overshadowed our success,” he said. “We have to deal with the perception.”

Commissioner Tisch, whom Mayor Adams appointed on Nov. 20, said she had issued an order for 200 officers to patrol the city’s trains. More officers will be deployed to subway platforms in the 50 highest-crime stations in the city, she said.

“We know that 78 percent of transit crime occurs on trains and on platforms, and that is quite obviously where our officers need to be,” Commissioner Tisch said. “This is just the beginning.”

Mayor Adams said that kind of presence “will allow New Yorkers to feel the omnipresence” of the police “and feel safe.”

The number of sexual assaults was down during the first part of 2024 but began to rise later in the year. Commissioner Tisch attributed that increase in part to a rise in the number of sexual assaults connected to domestic violence incidents and a change in state law in September that expanded the definition of what constitutes rape.

Under the law, the definition was expanded from strictly vaginal penetration by a penis to include acts of oral, anal and vaginal penetration.

Felony assaults have been persistently high since 2020, however.

Commissioner Tisch pointed to recidivism, citing police figures that showed a large increase in the number of people arrested three times for the same crime.

Mayor Adams cited mental health as a factor in many of these crimes. He has directed the police and emergency medical workers to hospitalize people they deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves, even if they did not pose a danger to others.

On Monday, he broached that issue again as he pointed to recent random acts of violence committed by people who appeared to have “severe mental health issues.”

“The many cases of people being pushed on the subway tracks, of women being punched in the face,” he said, “it’s the same profile.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul has called on state legislators to pass a law that would allow hospitals to force more people into mental health treatment. Mayor Adams supports that plan, though the New York Civil Liberties Union said it “threatens New Yorkers’ rights and liberties.”

Christopher Herrmann, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that while mental health is an important factor, other societal ills can drive felony assault numbers up.

“Is it housing insecurity? Are there food shortages? Is it the economy? We need to consider all of it,” he said.

Mr. Herrmann said crimes like assaults and robberies are the type “that really fuel public fear.”

“It’s just more of a reason we’ve got to get those numbers under control,” he said.

Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.