You always remember your first. For Fredrik Robertsson, it was a vivid-red Alexis Mabille jacket, with two oversize bows crowning either shoulder. For Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo, it was a gilded-brass Schiaparelli necklace sculpted into a pair of trompe l’oeil lungs (immortalized by Bella Hadid at Cannes). For Rebecca Vanyo, it was a black Giambattista Valli minidress wrapped in seafoam-green duchesse satin and embroidered with three-dimensional floral appliqués. And for a growing number of couture collectors, that introductory purchase is arriving earlier than ever.
Today’s clients aren’t just heiresses and socialites—such as the archetypal ladies who lunched Nan Kempner and Lynn Wyatt—they’re young tech founders, wealthy aesthetes, and archivists. Some treat couture as performance; others, as preservation. But what unites them is a desire to own something no algorithm can replicate.
