The couture shows wrapped up recently, but the real headline-makers weren’t Daniel Roseberry’s scorpion tails or Alessandro Michele’s feathered headdresses: they were Lauren Sanchez-Bezos and her husband Jeff, the owner of Amazon and fourth richest person in the world. And while it was a visually beautiful couture week, the fashion was upstaged by billionaires such as Bezos sitting front row. These appearances marked the latest step in a long-running campaign by the Bezoses to enter the luxury space – but what does their embrace by the fashion establishment tell us about the state of the industry?

In a sense, this is nothing new. Haute couture has always been the domain of the ultra-rich – but Bezos is a particularly egregious case. Amazon still has contracts with ICE, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, which shot two people dead around the same time the Bezoses were sitting front row. Last September, ICE paid $25 million for cloud systems from Amazon Web Services, via reselling partners like Dell Federal Systems. And that’s not to mention Jeff’s poorly disguised $40 million bribe to Trump in the form of Melania, an Amazon film about the First Lady which is reportedly the most expensive documentary ever; Melania herself pocketed around 70 per cent of this budget, an amount of $28 million.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that, while rubbing shoulders with fashion’s elite, Mr Amazon was in the process of laying off almost a third of the Washington Post’s staff, including over 300 journalists. Having seemingly lost interest in the newspaper, which he bought in 2013, he’s now rumoured to be buying Condé Nast, Vogue’s parent company, as a present for Sanchez-Bezos. A clip posted online during couture week showed Sanchez-Bezos stepping out of a car with Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s global chief content officer, which only added fuel to these rumours. And that very same week, “image architect” Law Roach styled Mrs Bezos for the Dior show, further indicating that the fashion establishment’s acceptance of the pair.

But the Bezos fashion takeover didn’t happen overnight. Last December, it was announced that the couple would be funding the 2026 Met Gala; in October, Sanchez-Bezos attended Balenciaga’s SS26 fashion show; and in June, amid the couple’s wedding festivities, the bride was not only seen in a super-corseted Schiaparelli couture dress, but also appeared on the digital cover of Vogue in a custom Dolce & Gabbana bridal gown. Even the couple’s 2023 launch into the pop culture limelight was facilitated by Vogue, in a 2023 editorial where the couple canoodled in a Jeep on their vast Texas ranch.

But Bezos’ courtship with the fashion industry stretches even further back than that. He’s already co-hosted the 2012 Met Gala, which was sponsored by Amazon; he funded New York Men’s Fashion Week in 2016; and in 2020, he came to the rescue of young designers struggling because of the pandemic with an Amazon storefront selling emerging fashion brands in collaboration with Vogue and the CFDA.

But why is this all coming to a head now? If Bezos’ rumoured Vogue purchase does go ahead, I don’t buy that it’s simply a wedding present for his wife, as reported by the Daily Mail. The businessman has grown Amazon into an empire, conquering e-commerce and streaming alike; hell, most of the Western world is paying a monthly stipend to him for the benefit of free next-day deliveries. But he’s never really conquered the fashion world, which might sound odd as Amazon is actually America’s largest clothing retailer, selling around $70 billion worth in 2025, according to Wells Fargo. However that doesn’t mean it’s considered luxury; reportedly, a large part of this is basics like t-shirts, underwear and socks from their Amazon Essentials line. For the kinds of people Bezos is now trying to get in with, his brand is syonymous by an air of cheap and mass-produced goods.

“The way we consume fashion as entertainment online often divorces the industry from its ugly realities”

As New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman noted, the chief financial officer of LVMH said in a 2016 investor call: “We believe that the existing business of Amazon doesn’t fit luxury, full stop, but also doesn’t fit with our brands. If they change the business model, I don’t know, but with the existing business model, there is no way we can do business with them for the time being.” But perhaps with more control over the fashion press, that could change. This might sound like a conspiracy theory but are we not living in a time where conspiracy theorists are looking less and less crazy?

It’s not hard to figure out why the world of luxury fashion is so appealing to the Bezoses. When you hear Amazon, you think of affordability and convenience – that’s the appeal. But that isn’t luxury. Rubbing shoulders with the fashion elite, wearing a Dior by Galliano or vintage Chanel suit – that’s luxury. And perhaps the couple hopes this will have a halo effect on any fashion ventures they might pursue. Amazon has already conquered the affordable market, so why not set their sights on luxury, too? After all, it was LVMH’s CEO Bernard Arnault who once said: “Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury profit margins.”

We’ve already seen reports about the declining quality of certain luxury brands. Cheaply manufactured products dressed up with words like “heritage” and “craft”. Bags sold for thousands that don’t even cost £50 to make. Who’s to say it won’t get even worse? And if that happens, why shouldn’t Amazon get a slice of the pie?

This all shines a spotlight on an ugly reality many of us fashion fans would rather not admit. Most of us love fashion for its creativity and crafts; for the passion, drama and spectacle of it all; for the theatrical designers like Alexander McQueen, John Galliano or Thierry Mugler. But the way we consume fashion as entertainment online often divorces the industry from its ugly realities, like the scale of its environmental impact of the abhorrent labour conditions of many of its garment workers, to name just a few examples. We can choose to forget these darker aspects because they make us uncomfortable, and taint something which brings us joy. We forget that fashion is, above all, a business; one that is dictated by wealth and power, and propped up by people who aren’t exactly the picture of ethical consumerism.

Couture can be consumed by the general public as art, yes, but it’s really meant for people who can drop hundreds of thousands on fashion in one go. And, unfortunately, the people with this kind of money have often built their wealth in rather… unsavoury ways. In the wake of this discourse, journalist Louis Pisano posted a video about Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of former Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov, someone who allegedly built her fortune through extortion, bribes and terrorising business rivals. She was also an important client for luxury brands.

None of this is to excuse the Bezoses being present at couture week – it’s extremely dystopian to watch billionaires prancing around Paris in their finery as if all is well in the world. But couture relies on these people to survive, and brands aren’t going to change willingly; doing business with billionaires is the price of keeping the craftsmanship of couture alive. In a way, artists have always needed patrons: the powerful Medici family essentially sponsored the Italian Renaissance.

If we want a different fashion industry, we have to start by supporting the designers and artists who exist outside of the mainstream. Independent brands and makers who aren’t interested in global expansion and just want to get by doing what they love. We can’t buy our way out of the problem, but choosing to put your money in the pocket of a regular person rather than a billionaire is a form of resistance, albeit a very small one. You won’t save the world by buying a cute top, but you might make that creator’s life a little better.

Ultimately, we’ll tune into the next fashion season as usual, because we all love the spectacle, and only that sort of wealth and power can put on a grand show like this. But, while we watch, let’s ask: who benefits from this?