With the exception of nature, art is arguably fashion’s most enduring source of inspiration. Throughout history, designers have turned to paintings, sculptures, weavings, and other media, whose prints and patterns, contours and compositions, are echoed in their garments.
The fruitful relationship between both creative fields has spawned several exhibitions this year alone. Most notable of them is The Met Costume Institute’s spring 2026 blockbuster, “Costume Art,” while other highlights include “Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and “Art X Fashion” at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Parallel to the surge of fashion exhibitions, cultural institutions have become draws for fashion brands to host their runway shows. Likewise, it seems each season brings a fresh handful of artist collaborations.
Art has undeniably become the ultimate cultural currency for fashion brands; however, for several designers, art has always played an integral role in their personal lives. Many notable names have filled their homes with exquisite objects that naturally mirror their eye for color and form. Several describe collecting as an “addiction,” whether it’s for blue-chip contemporary art or charming mementos encountered during travels.
Proving how art goes beyond the runway, the following designers take patronage to the next level. Some have made their collections public; others have deliberately used their platform to elevate undersung and up-and-coming talents. All have made their homes bespoke havens for visual inspiration through the works with which they choose to surround themselves.
Below, we spotlight 10 fashion visionaries whose love of art extends well beyond the runway.
Miuccia Prada, 2017
Martin Schoeller
CAMERA WORK
Exhibition view featuring Alberto Burri, Plastica, 1962 and Alberto Burri, Plastica 8, 1963, 1962-1963
Alberto Burri
Fondazione Prada
Collecting has long been a serious enterprise for Miuccia Prada and her husband Patrizio Bertelli, who began purchasing art during the early 1990s.
With a predilection for the avant-garde, they became early collectors of works by Damien Hirst, Carsten Höller, and Anish Kapoor, while also being drawn to Italian artists, such as Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri. In 2020, Prada told Numéro about the process of educating herself on art and eventually forming friendships with artists was rigorous yet rewarding: “Getting into a relationship with art is like starting one with an extremely intelligent person: it opens up new horizons for you.”
In 1993, Prada and Bertelli established PradaMilanoArte, which exhibited and published catalogues of contemporary art. Two years later, the project became Fondazione Prada, which now operates two venues in Milan (the famed Rem Koolhaas–designed flagship opened in 2015) and one in Venice. While the spaces feature works from Prada and Bertelli’s extensive collection (artists include Robert Gober, Louise Bourgeois, and Walter De Maria), their rich program frequently showcases loaned pieces. The foundation’s repertoire has expanded to encompass architecture, cinema, science, and technology.
Unsurprisingly, the fashion designer has collaborated with countless artists at Prada (the label’s co-creative director, Raf Simons, is also an avid art collector). Miu Miu, Prada’s sister label that is more geared toward the female gaze, has provided yet another outlet for the Italian entrepreneur to share her passion for the arts. In 2011, Miu Miu introduced the Miu Miu Women’s Tales short-film series, spotlighting female filmmakers and perspectives. Miu Miu has also been the official partner of the Art Basel Paris Public Program since 2024.
Dries Van Noten
One of this year’s buzziest openings was Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice, unveiled just in time for the city’s Biennale in May. After stepping down as creative director of his eponymous label in 2024, the Belgian designer diverted his attention to restoring Palazzo Pisani Moretta, a historic 15th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal, with his partner Patrick Vangheluwe.
“The Only True Protest is Beauty,” the foundation’s inaugural show, was curated by Van Noten and Geert Bruloot, who organized “The Antwerp Six,” the radical group of Belgian fashion designers, including Van Noten, that emerged during the 1980s. The show featured more than 200 objects, including archival Christian Lacroix and Comme des Garçons looks, alongside cutting-edge design works by Misha Kahn, poignant sculpture by Joyce J. Scott, macabre jewelry by Attilio Codognato, and dozens of curiosities rarely seen in prominent art and fashion spaces.
The intoxicating mix of work on view reflects Van Noten’s idiosyncratic taste, which has long guided his personal collection and designs for his namesake company. “The line in our collection is that there is no line,” Van Noten said in a 2026 video for BRAFA Art Fair, where the designer has sourced numerous objects, such as a pair of mid-17th-century bronze sculptures of Apollo and Mercury. A lover of antiques, Van Noten has also acquired many artworks and furnishings via auction, as well as in frequent travels across the globe.
Van Noten’s artistic influences on his fashion collections were equally diverse. Victor Vasarely, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, Elizabeth Peyton, and Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais have all served as inspiration, as have more niche international practices such as suminagashi, a traditional Japanese marbling technique. Japanese artist Azuma Makoto’s frozen floral arrangements melting on the runway made Van Noten’s spring/summer 2017 collection particularly memorable. Additionally, Van Noten introduced an impressive in-store gallery in the company’s Los Angeles boutique, which has staged shows by Dustin Yellin, Laila Gohar, Martin Creed, and Brian Rochefort, among others.
During his tenure as creative director of Louis Vuitton from 1997–2013, Marc Jacobs catapulted fashion-art partnerships into the mainstream, thanks to iconic collaborations with artists like Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, and Yayoi Kusama. Jacobs has continued tapping artists he admires, such as Genieve Figgis, Rachel Feinstein, Marilyn Minter, Derrick Adams, and David Shrigley for his namesake label.
In recent years, he’s found a muse in Anna Weyant, who painted his portrait for the cover of Vanity Fair’s Style 2026 issue, published this August (the story coincides with Jacobs’s sale of Marc Jacobs International). Earlier this year, Jacobs commissioned Weyant to make paintings for his spring 2026 show. A few months prior, the duo collaborated on a two-day pop-up exhibition with The Cultivist and Capital One, in which they transformed Manhattan’s Academy Mansion into a life-size dollhouse. And in 2024, as guest editor for Vogue’s December 2024 issue, Jacobs invited Weyant to paint model Kaia Gerber as one of the issue’s alternate covers.
After moving to a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed house in Rye, New York, Jacobs sold the contents of his West Village townhouse at Sotheby’s in 2019. Assembled over nearly 20 years were artworks by Ed Ruscha, whom Jacobs called “the greatest living American artist,” John Currin, Peyton, Lisa Yuskavage, and Urs Fischer; important design works by François-Xavier Lalanne, Jean-Michel Frank, and Jean Dunand; as well as a trove of Boucheron jewels. Also featured were works by Karen Kilimnik and Mike Kelley, the first artists Jacobs collected.
In terms of filling his current home, the designer told Vogue in 2024, “I daydream about continuing to fill this reimagined interior with art, Arts and Crafts, Deco, Chinese and Japanese art, and Roman antiquities.”
Tory Burch
The collecting bug runs in Tory Burch’s family, but like her parents, acquiring art was a matter of style, not value. The designer, who was an art history major, told Gagosian Quarterly in 2025, “When I look at the art I have, it’s so eclectic—everything from Old Masters to Helen Frankenthaler, René Magritte, Peter Doig, Gertrude Abercrombie, Madeline Hewes, Giacometti, Folk Art and flea market finds.”
Antique cow creamers and Indian reverse-glass paintings from her travels delight Burch just as much as Régence chairs from the collection of Hubert de Givenchy or a bronze apple inside which Claude Lalanne cast the lips of Burch and her husband Pierre-Yves Roussel. Burch is additionally well-versed in design, with pieces by Diego Giacometti, Karl Springer, Carlo Bugatti, and Tony Duquette in her collection.
Reflecting her pottery and china obsession, Burch collaborated with Dodie Thayer, known as the “Pottery Queen of Palm Beach,” on a lettuce-ware collection for her homeware line. In terms of fashion, Burch has designed notable collections inspired by historical women artists, such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Sonia Delaunay, or in partnership with contemporary female artists, like Francesca DiMattio (the look Burch designed with friend Rashid Johnson for director Janicza Bravo at the 2025 Met Gala is another standout). Always looking for opportunities to uplift women’s voices and creativity, Burch is notably a major donor of the forthcoming Smithsonian Institution’s American Women’s History Museum, as well as a member of its advisory board.
One look at Duro Olowu’s Instagram, and it’s clear the designer is a serious art aficionado—it’s no surprise with legendary curator and director of the Studio Museum in Harlem Thelma Golden as his wife. Still, the Lagos-born, London-based designer is a lifelong collector of photography, ceramics, and decorative objects in his own right. Having traveled frequently to London and Geneva with his family, Olowu was exposed to a wide array of visual culture, as illustrated by his personal collection. Rare books and African textiles meet paintings and sculpture spanning continents and periods. Among his favorite contemporary pieces are those by Lisa Brice, Michael Armitage, and longtime collaborator Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Olowu’s fashion collections have culled inspiration from Kees van Dongen, Édouard Vuillard, the Surrealists, Barkley L. Hendricks, and Baya, the self-taught Algerian artist who exhibited her paintings of kaleidoscopically clad women at just 16, capturing the attention of Pablo Picasso. When it comes to displaying his vividly patterned garments in his London boutique, Olowu opts to juxtapose them with treasured possessions, ranging from artworks by Stanley Whitney to mid-century Yoruba beaded “Diviner’s” bags and Vallauris pottery.
As a curator, Olowu follows a similar approach. Since 2012, Salon 94 has been a consistent venue for him to organize shows marrying his own designs with antique African garments and works by artists that inspire him. In 2022, he curated the first New York solo exhibition of Chicago artist Robert Earl Paige, also known for introducing West African–inspired textiles to American audiences during the 1970s, at Salon 94. “I always feel it’s important for any show I curate to reflect this deep conversation between all the mediums that continue to exist amongst artists in real life,” he told Aperture in 2024.
Two other seminal museum moments include “Making and Unmaking”—a show that centered the practices and processes of artists who use textiles, that Olowu curated in 2016 at London’s Camden Arts Centre—and “Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago,” a 400-piece exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The latter marked the first time a non-art professional guest curated a show in the institution’s 50-year history. In 2022, the Olowu also curated “Duro Olowu Selects” at the Cooper Hewitt Museum where he explored and interpreted select objects from the New York museum’s collection.
When it comes to Pop art, Tommy Hilfiger’s credentials reign supreme, and fascinatingly, the designer’s ties to the movement run deep. After meeting during the late 1970s, Andy Warhol invited Hilfiger, then just finding his footing in New York, to his famed Factory. “I couldn’t afford any of [his art] back then, even though it was very inexpensive. But I loved the fact that he brought fashion, art, pop culture and entertainment together. I always thought when I started making money, I’d collect art and buy Warhols,” Hilfiger told DuJour.
The opportunity came around the time that the designer launched his eponymous company in 1985, thanks to his friend Prince Rupert Loewenstein, who was the financial advisor for the Rolling Stones. Hilfiger bought a series of Warhol’s Mick Jagger screenprints, which both the Stones’ frontman and the artist had signed.
Tommy Hilfiger, New York, 1996
Harry Benson
Staley-Wise Gallery
Hilfiger later sold the series in a 2021 auction of his and wife Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger’s collection at Sotheby’s, which also included works by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana. The couple had previously sold two collaborative paintings by Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat at Sotheby’s—on the occasion, he told the auction house, “What really impressed me was that [Warhol] was the purveyor of Pop culture, and what I call FAME: fashion, art, music, entertainment, and he really inspired and influenced me tremendously.” As evidenced by their home tours and other auction sales, the Hilfigers have amassed works by Keith Haring, Hirst, Jean Dubuffet, and Tracey Emin, among many others.
Hilfiger themed his fall celebrity-filled 2022 campaign around Warhol’s Factory, while the spring 2023 collection had a nautical Pop treatment, recalling the artist’s time in Montauk. Hilfiger has also tapped Richard Quinn for a limited-edition collection, as well as the estate of Haring.
Jonathan Anderson
In his personal collection, as well as throughout his time at Loewe, Dior, and his namesake label, Jonathan Anderson has proven himself as the king of craft. The Northern Irish designer inherited his grandfather’s ceramics obsession and counts Lucie Rie, John Ward, Jennifer Lee, and Sara Flynn among his favorite practitioners. Other areas of his collection run the gamut. Works by Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, Paul Thek, and George Dureau speak to Anderson’s interest in the theme of gender fluidity, while Arts and Crafts furnishings (especially made by Charles Rennie Mackintosh) feed his passion for the homemade.
As Loewe’s creative director from 2013–25, Anderson embraced Spain’s rich history of artisanship and Surrealism, churning out one viral trompe l’oeil garment and accessory after another. He also worked with or created collections inspired by Vincent van Gogh, William Morris, Lynda Benglis, Anthea Hamilton, Ken Price, and Joe Brainard. One of his greatest contributions, however, was establishing the influential Loewe Foundation Craft Prize in 2016 to foster new talent across the applied arts.
For his Dior haute couture debut in early 2026, Anderson channeled the bulbous vessels of one of his all-time favorite ceramists, Magdalene A.N. Odundo, into voluminous, sculptural dresses—the collaboration was then exhibited in a weeklong presentation at the Musée Rodin. This July, Anderson again worked with Benglis, another beloved artist (he owns more than five pieces), perfectly capturing the movement and luster of her wired sculptures in striking garments and headpieces.
For JW Anderson, his namesake brand, the designer has partnered with the Tom of Finland Foundation, the estate of David Wojnarowicz, and Gilbert & George. Around the same time he transitioned to Dior, Anderson shifted the direction of JW Anderson, leaning into his love of culture by selling art and objects he specially selected for both the company’s brick-and-mortar and online stores.
It’s far from the first time Anderson has put on his curatorial hat. He has curated shows bringing together art and fashion for the Hepworth Wakefield in northern England, as well as London’s Offer Waterman gallery. In 2025, he also organized an exhibition of work by Winifred Nicholson and Andrew Cranston at the Holburne Museum in Bath, England, while for London’s Thomas Dane Gallery, he and Kenny Schacter co-curated a Paul Thek solo show.
Ulla Johnson
All the years that Ulla Johnson’s mother (a painter, restorer, and conservator) dragged her to museums around New York City paid off. In 2019, the fashion designer told Architectural Digest that she was obsessed with the pioneering fiber artist Sheila Hicks since she was five. Now the 92-year-old artist’s woven works have pride of place in Johnson’s home, shared with her children and art-consultant husband, Zach Miner. With works by Françoise Grossen and Analia Saban, the couple’s collection is a testament to Johnson’s passion for textiles and supporting living and women artists (her dream is to build an important collection of fiber art by women artists for public view).
Elsewhere in Johnson’s collection are artworks by Kathleen Ryan, Ugo Rondinone, and Marina Rheingantz, as well as furnishings by design icons such as Charlotte Perriand, George Nakashima, Pierre Paulin, and Mario Bellini. All are layered with baskets, ceramics, and shells found during travels, echoing the bohemian spirit of the designer’s ethereal garments.
Art is often the starting point for Johnson’s fashion collections. Her impressive list of contemporary artist collaborators includes Alma Allen, Shara Hughes, and Julie Hamisky, who, like her grandmother Claude Lalanne, electroplates flora and fauna into enchanting jewelry. Johnson additionally spent several years working with the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to conceive collections inspired by the pioneering female Abstract Expressionists. The designer told Gagosian Quarterly of her spring 2026 muse: “With Frankenthaler, the way she worked with the canvas—the putting it on the floor, this sort of thrust from the shoulder, the way the paint moves, the soak-stain technique—it just felt so applicable to fabric. And there’s this sense of being borderless, which is also how we work.”
Erdem
Erdem, 2019
Erwin Olaf
Patricia Conde Galería
Warhol also played a key role in Erdem’s career, as one of the first drawings he bought, nearly 20 years ago, was a 1950s illustration of a woman in profile by the artist. After initially collecting contemporary photography (including works by Nan Goldin, Rineke Dijkstra, and Candida Höfer), the Turkish British designer gradually expanded into other categories and time periods.
“Older paintings, drawings, and sculpture entered the collection and began to sit alongside contemporary work. I think that changed the way I looked at everything. The collection has grown very instinctively. One thing leads to another, often in ways you couldn’t have anticipated,” Erdem told Artsy, citing, for example, that he went through a long phase of collecting busts, particularly those by Wilhelm Lehmbruck. “Pavel Tchelitchew and Patrick Procktor are important to me, as is that interconnected world of Tchelitchew, George Platt Lynes and Jared French. There’s also Derek Jarman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Cecil Beaton, Kaye Donachie and David Hockney. I’ve recently been collecting Lisa Brice too.”
Since he founded his brand in 2005, the designer has frequently woven artistic influences into his practice. As with his personal collection, Erdem, a self-proclaimed bibliophile, loves nothing more than a research rabbit hole when developing his fashion collections. They are frequently based on intriguing female heroines throughout history, including Deborah, the late dowager duchess of Devonshire (a major collector herself), which inspired an exhibition on their connection at Chatsworth in 2024.
Another standout was Erdem’s spring 2023 collection, which shined a light on cultural preservation and restoration based on the designer’s visits with experts at the British Museum, Tate Britain, the National Gallery, and the V&A. For his fall 2025 collection, Erdem collaborated with Donachie, who was a few years ahead of him at London’s Royal College of Art, and from whom he previously commissioned a portrait of his late mother for his boutique. This summer, it was announced that another commission, the artist’s portrait of the designer himself, has entered the permanent collection of London’s National Portrait Gallery.
Cynthia Rowley
When Cynthia Rowley started dating her now-husband Bill Powers during the early 2000s, it was love at first artwork upon learning that they each acquired works from the same Chris Johnson drawings series.
Having come from a family of painters, Rowley originally aspired to follow in her mother’s and grandmothers’ footsteps, and she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Realizing fashion was her calling, she has built a life pouring her love of art into her designs and personal collection, built with Powers, the founder of New York’s Half Gallery. The couple also founded the print edition company Exhibition A in 2010, which they sold in 2019.
Their home aesthetic is as bright and pattern-filled as Rowley’s line. One highlight is a Peyton portrait of a teenage Queen Elizabeth. “I love that drawing because it feels like something I would have hoped to do when I was in art school,” Rowley told the New York Times in 2018 of the work, featured in the artist’s first show at the Chelsea Hotel in 1991. Other contemporary pieces in the collection are by Richard Prince, John Currin, George Condo, Henry Taylor, Dana Schutz, Rob Pruitt, Tom Sachs, and Rene Ricard, while earlier iterations of their kids’ rooms featured works by Japanese artists such as Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara.
Rowley has produced a handful of limited-edition products, including a collaboration with Olaf Breuning, sold through Gagosian Shop during the 2010s. She has also teamed up with artists Will Cotton, Ryan McNamara, and Josh Smith on clothing, paintings, and performance art.
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