12 Fashion Designers Who Collect Art
Fashion has always flirted with art, but some designers didn't stop at a painting above the sofa. They collected, lived with, and built entire institutions around the work that inspired them. These 12 fashion visionaries understood that taste isn't just personal, it's a form of power.
Miuccia Prada
Miuccia Prada is one of the most powerful cultural collectors in Europe. Together with Patrizio Bertelli, she built Fondazione Prada, an institution that turned the Prada universe into a serious platform for contemporary art, film, architecture and theory. ArtReview lists her as a collector and funder bridging art, fashion and high society.
Raf Simons
Raf Simons is one of fashion’s most convincing art collectors because the collection actually explains the clothes. He has lived with works by friends and peers such as Sterling Ruby, George Condo and Cris Brodahl, plus ceramics by Valentine Schlegel, Axel Salto, Picasso and Pol Chambost. Vanity Fair also notes his interest in Cady Noland, Cindy Sherman, Rosemarie Trockel, Isa Genzken, Charles Ray, Richard Prince, Christopher Wool and Mike Kelley.
Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs is the rare fashion collector whose private collection became fully visible because he sent a large part of it to auction. In 2019, Sotheby’s presented Works from the Collection of Marc Jacobs, with sales across New York and online.
Kim Jones
Kim Jones collects like someone who understands fashion as cultural infrastructure. His personal collecting includes paintings, books, fashion memorabilia and two private libraries, while collaborations with artists from KAWS and Raymond Pettibon to Peter Doig have shaped his Dior work. Gagosian describes collecting as his longtime hobby, and Sotheby’s profiled him specifically as a collector-curator.
Jonathan Anderson
Jonathan Anderson is one of the best contemporary examples because he folds art into retail, craft, exhibition-making and brand identity. The Art Newspaper reported that he had around 300 works and shows art, old and new, in Loewe stores around the world.
Rick Owens
Rick Owens is better described as an art-and-design collector than a pure contemporary-art collector, but the visual world is strong enough to include him. His Paris interiors are filled with furniture, objects, sculpture and art-historical references; House & Garden’s coverage of Vogue’s Objects of Affection notes his Giacomo Balla chairs and an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.
Diane von Furstenberg
Diane von Furstenberg belongs here as a collector-patron figure rather than a market-first collector. She has been close to the New York contemporary art scene since the Warhol era and speaks about Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns and Warhol as part of the cultural world that shaped her.
Delfina Delettrez Fendi
Delfina Delettrez Fendi is a good addition if you allow jewellery designers within fashion. Sotheby’s described her as someone uniquely positioned at the intersection of high fashion, fine art, and luxury, and interviewed her for Contemporary Curated Milan about her approach to collecting.
Valentino Garavani
Valentino Garavani is a serious collector, but not purely a contemporary art collector: his universe spans modern masters, photography, sculpture, and design. The strongest public-market evidence is a Basquiat from the collection of Valentino Garavani heading to auction.
Virgil Abloh
We would include Virgil Abloh, but with a different framing: less “collector” and more of an artist-designer who became part of the contemporary art system. He collaborated with Takashi Murakami at Gagosian, worked in dialogue with Arthur Jafa, and his own objects have appeared at Sotheby’s.
