May 8, 2026 |
The first couture piece Lauren Amos bought was from Iris van Herpen in 2015.
The Atlanta-based tastemaker and owner of cult boutique ANT/DOTE had supported an exhibition at the city’s High Museum of Art celebrating the boundary-pushing designer.
“It felt like a very different psychological commitment than anything I had done before,” says Amos. “I wasn’t buying couture as an indulgence or even as fashion – I was supporting an artist I deeply believe in, someone I consider one of the most important creators of our generation.”
ARMANI PRIVE SS26
Fashion folk will be used to seeing Amos trotting around the shows in Paris with her shock of pink hair and her sculptural Rick Owens and Junya Watanabe looks. She’s an avid collector of fashion. Whether it’s Comme des Garçons or Ghesquière-era Balenciaga, right through to younger brands like Dilara Findikoglu. Though buying couture felt different. “I was very aware that purchasing that piece came with responsibility. Couture is often experienced privately, behind closed doors, by very few people, and from the beginning I thought about that garment as having a life beyond me,” she says of the van Herpen dress. “I get immense joy from wearing it, but I’ve always seen myself as a caretaker – someone carrying something culturally significant forward so it can eventually be seen, studied and appreciated in a public context.”
SCHIAPARELLI COUTURE SS26
Stepping into couture wasn’t a conscious leap – it unfolded slowly. “What drew me in was the difference in intention. Couture felt less like consumption and more like participation. I was no longer just buying fashion; I was engaging with work that felt historically significant. Ready-to-wear remains incredibly important to me – it’s how fashion lives in the world – but couture offered a different kind of closeness.”
VIKTOR & ROLF COUTURE SS26
As she began attending more couture shows, it was the artistry that goes into the garment-making that struck her. “There was nothing comparable. The craftsmanship, the conceptual depth, the time, it all demanded a different kind of attention. Having something custom-made for my body felt incredibly intimate. I wasn’t just wearing a designer’s vision, my body became part of it.” Her purchases so far include a neoprene dress from Demna’s second Balenciaga couture outing and a van Herpen frock from SS21 inspired by fungi networks and how lifeforms interact with one another. “Her work is unlike anything else,” says Amos of the designer who makes up the majority of her couture collection. “It exists at the intersection of science, nature and emotion, while remaining deeply human. Iris has an extraordinary ability to translate natural systems – movement, growth, evolution – into something poetic and wearable.”
DIOR COUTURE SS26
Amos is also a big fan of Viktor & Rolf. Having admired the Dutch duo’s work from afar – “There was something about it that felt intimidating, almost untouchable, and I experienced it more as a spectator than a participant” – she would work closely with the designers when their retrospective Fashion Statements exhibition came to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in October.
“What struck me was how naturally their practice lives between fashion and art. They don’t just make clothes, they build ideas, narratives and provocations,” she says. “Their work feels at home in a museum context because it asks questions, reflects culture back at us and isn’t afraid of excess, emotion or contradiction. That intellectual and conceptual depth was something I hadn’t fully grasped until I experienced the work up close.”
MATIERES FECALES SS26
What does she look for in a potential purchase? Resonance, first and foremost. “A couture piece has to meet me emotionally before it ever meets me aesthetically,” she says. Amos is not interested in anything passive or casual: a piece she’s wearing should command the space it’s in. “It should feel specific to the moment it was made, but capable of outliving it. It matters deeply to me that I’m engaging with artists who are shaping culture, not simply responding to it. I’m conscious that I’m acquiring more than a garment. I’m collecting a moment. Couture, for me, is about history as much as it is about fashion.”
IRIS VAN HERPEN COUTURE SS22
VALENTINO COUTURE SS26
Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out NOW. Order your copy here.
HAUTE DREAMS
Photographer JERMAINE FRANCIS
Fashion Editor GARTH ALLDAY SPENCER
Talent LAUREN AMOS
Text PAUL TONER
Hair JULIEN PARIZET
Make-up ALAN LEAL using DIOR BEAUTY
Fashion Assistants LILA SOEN at Noob Agency and GEORGIA EDWARDS
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU and SONYA MAZURYK
Special thanks to AMANDA PAUL and JESSICA YATES
