What does luxury fashion’s platforming of tech billionaires signal about the industry? Certainly not sustainability. Here, Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick delves into some recent stories of such events to highlight how questionable values in both fields are coming together to fuel each other with money and cultural clout.
The devil really does wear Prada
For the past few months, stories of tech billionaires entering high fashion spaces have become the norm. While this isn’t surprising given the fashion industry itself has many billionaires, it’s a concerning pairing of poor values: of elevating key figures leading in enabling global harm of people, the planet, and animals. Here are a few recent examples worth paying attention to.
Mark Zuckerberg was front row at Prada
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were the breakout guests at the Milan fashion week show, arriving with Anna Wintour and Eva Chen, the head of Instagram’s fashion partnerships. It is believed this is a tie in to a potential Meta AI Glasses collaboration as Zuckerberg was seated next to Lorenzo Bertelli, Miuccia Prada’s son. “That he sat with Meta’s chief executive reflected how fashion shows are now just one part of the business at a multinational luxury house like Prada,” The New York Times observed.
The Bezoses are honorary Met Gala board members
The Amazon billionaires have gone from lead sponsors of this year’s Met Gala to helping to shape the event, whose theme has been revealed as “fashion is art”. The couple will join other co-chairs like Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour. “Come May 4, the Bezoses will take their place at the pinnacle of the party,” Vanessa Friedman of The New York Times noted. “The resulting image may be proof positive for many that it has become the most visceral expression of a new gilded age.” This comes a month after Sánchez made headlines for attending Paris haute couture shows like Dior and Schiaparelli, while being seen with image architect Law Roach.
Curious figures walked the Gucci runway
While Demna’s Gucci show was divisive, the spectre of wealth clouded the room. While Paris and Nicki Hilton attended the show, two curious faces walked the runway: the first was Vivian Wilson—the estranged daughter of Elon Musk, who she has called a “pathetic man-child”—along with Karlie Kloss, who is married to billionaire entrepreneur Josh Kushner and is sister-in-law to Ivanka Trump. Whether as parody or to court them, the connections to these problematic billionaires were clear—and perhaps an invitation.
Why are fashion and the ultra wealthy tech increasingly coupled?
Luxury fashion has always been tied to the wealthiest, but its growing links to tech and political figures are to sell products and ideas to the masses. By the Zuckerbergs and Bezoses infiltrating fashion, this is a matter of associations to luxury, taste, and “cool”. The intention could be about sales, to make Meta glasses more trendy or to court luxury shoppers to Amazon. But it could also be seen as a merging of ideologies: that luxury brands known to exploit workers, animals, and environments are partnering with industries and figures known to be similarly exploitative. Given these billionaires’ ties to Trump and the rising issues around tech surveillance, some in the industry see no problem merging such poor values together.
“We all know billionaires keep the lights on in the fashion industry but that doesn’t mean they should be welcomed with open arms just so the brands we love can continue making clothes we like,” fashion analyst Mandy Lee commented on the subject. “There is a very fine line between accepting that is our reality and being ignorant to the real dangers it poses.”
Meanwhile, Anastasia Vartanian wrote for Glamour: “Whether this is another attempt at farming engagement through sparking outrage or a sign of corrupt morals is up to your interpretation. What we can say for certain, though, is that the tech revolution in fashion is here.”
