The appointment is scheduled before the show, not after. In a quiet suite several floors above the runway venue, racks of a new collection stand untouched by editors, influencers, and critics. The clothes have not yet been photographed. They have not been posted to Instagram. They have not been reviewed. But some of them have already been sold.
A private stylist combs through the racks, FaceTiming the daughter of a business tycoon who’s several time zones away. These pieces—crystal-embellished coats, purses with 24-karat gold hardware and exotic leather—might cost tens of thousands of dollars or even more than our yearly salaries. For a very important client, it’s just a drop in the ocean of a vast shopping budget.
These clients, colloquially known as VICs in the industry, represent a sliver of fashion’s audience, yet they increasingly determine its direction—as long as they spend their money.
A 2024 case study by Business of Fashion states that the top 2% of luxury shoppers can account for close to half of a brand’s annual revenue. That figure can be even higher at multi-brand luxury retailers like Luisaviaroma and Mytheresa, the latter of which attributes more than $400 million of its 2024 sales figures to these VICs, according to Vogue.
The industry’s reliance on VICs has only intensified in recent years, the influence of the ultra-wealthy individuals swelling as broader consumer confidence wavers. With recessionary murmurs growing louder and financial instability affecting discretionary spending, the so-called luxury slump has become a persistent anxiety in the face of every collection launch and quarterly earnings report. In some cases, losing a single top-tier client can mean losing millions in annual revenue.
To the brands, the answer to keeping numbers high is clear: Invest more money into courting VICs and their big pockets. The result is doubling down on privileged access that cannot be livestreamed, liked, or attended by the masses. Think extravagant shopping trips by brands to flagship boutiques, intimate dinners with a creative director and their team, and exclusive invitations to sit front row at buzzy runway shows.
Shopping Trips
Maisons like Cartier, Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Bulgari all have concierge teams that work hand in hand with sales associates to curate and execute one-of-a-kind luxury experiences for high-spend clientele. Brands are even curating liminal third spaces to cater to VICs. Gucci famously opened an invite-only salon on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles in an attempt to bring desirable clients its way.
They’re not just buying physical products they can display in their closets or wear to swanky charity galas, fashion commentator and strategist Jay Choyce Tibbitts explains. Instead, VICs are buying proximity to the designer, to the atelier, and to a world that remains out of reach for 98% of shoppers.
“Showing the value of buying into a brand’s world as a VIC has become more important than ever,” Choyce Tibbitts explains. “In the past, these people would buy anything the brand told them to just to feel accepted, but now, as they get more discerning with their spend and there’s only so many people who can shop at this level, brands have to all compete for that same client.”
In other words, the traditional hierarchy of luxury—where a brand dictated what was being bought and sold based on a designer’s taste—is starting to shift. Instead, VICs are shaping what’s even being produced in the first place. Their dollars act like casting votes on what stays and goes. With higher spend at a certain house or on a certain product category, a label will slowly begin to integrate more products to cater to that demand.
It goes even further: Murmurs from stylists and industry insiders have alluded to certain brands being in trouble if a new creative director isn’t delivering on a vision their high-end clients want. A single shift in who’s leading a brand could mean tens of millions of dollars lost in revenue if the clothes aren’t appealing to VICs. When a tiny group of shoppers accounts for such a large percentage of a brand’s revenue, luxury houses can no longer afford to treat them like the average customer.
Of course, it’s transactional, but at the end of the day, it’s a two-way street. How can I meet this person’s needs in securing them access to a runway look, and how can they meet my needs in hitting my sales quota?
Anonymous
But how do these VICs actually shop?
For most, it’s rarely a matter of walking into a boutique and browsing the racks. Amrita Singh, a Dubai-based fashion editor and private stylist who works with ultra-wealthy individuals describes the process as equal parts sourcing and strategy. Many of her clients operate entirely remotely. Singh photographs clothing pieces, sends them to her clients, and requests payment once they confirm their selections. In this role, she functions as both stylist and body double. Some clients are too busy, protected, or otherwise occupied to visit a store in person. That’s where Singh comes in.
Pieces are sold before they’re publicly released. Special orders of beaded dresses and couture gowns are placed months in advance. Relationships with sales associates and brand executives are carefully cultivated and maintained. Singh has been invited to private re-sees, sat front row at shows, and been jetted off to spend long weekends in palazzos on shopping trips, all with the aim of courting Singh’s clients—many of whom these brands will never meet.
That dynamic between clients, their personal shoppers, and sales associates is often the quiet engine behind VIC loyalty. While brands may host private dinners and open invite-only salons, retention frequently comes down to a single point of contact: the person texting when a rare piece arrives, the one holding a limited-edition item in the back room, the one who remembers a birthday or a preference for yellow gold over white.
It goes without saying that access is tiered. Naturally, the top-spend clients get access to the best of the best—exotic leathers, custom colorways, and bespoke pieces that will never make it to a boutique floor. Singh is the first line of defense when it comes to protecting her clients’ best interests. Most of the women she styles are VICs at several luxury houses, and some of them are even in the top 10 spenders of maisons globally. Her clients mostly hail from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), a growing market with an outsized influence in luxury. “This constant pressure to consume from these luxury brands and aggressive sales associates needs to stop,” Singh laments. At times, she and her clients feel like there’s a carrot being dangled over their heads, as brands threaten to revoke their access anytime if they don’t place an order large or fast enough, even months in advance. “In my eyes, it’s not a luxury experience when someone snaps at me asking why my client won’t buy a certain item,” she continues. It costs a pretty penny to enter this world, but Singh’s clients are happy to pay it.
It’s not just about how much you spend, though. It’s where you spend it and how strategically. Department stores like Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue might reward their top clients with invites to private events, but when your purchases are scattered across dozens of designers, it can be harder to stand out to any one brand. If your goal is access to a specific house’s inner circle, loyalty goes a long way. So does having a strong relationship with a sales associate, someone who knows your taste, keeps you in mind when rare pieces come in, and can advocate for you when it counts.
“Of course, it’s transactional, but at the end of the day, it’s a two-way street,” a sales associate who works at a luxury department store shares. “How can I meet this person’s needs in securing them access to a runway look, and how can they meet my needs in hitting my sales quota?” She’s gone above and beyond for her clients, who will often fly in from the southern U.S. on dedicated shopping trips to see her and her client relations team. She describes Chanel shoe-drop days as the Hunger Games, as her clients send dozens of pings to secure access to a pair of ballet flats. “Still, we have long-standing relationships with clients, and we know the type of shopper they are. We still have to be respectful,” she adds.
Luxury Experiences
But the world of a VIC doesn’t look the same for everyone, particularly the younger generation of luxury shoppers entering the fray as high-spending adults. Historically, most fashion-inclined elite shoppers were invisible. At most, their names were in the newspaper or on the side of a multibillion-dollar university building. Today, though, some of luxury’s biggest spenders are doing the exact opposite: They’re turning private appointments into content and million-dollar shopping vlogs into a monetizable audience.
Chloe Liem, 22, is a student and content creator with 1.2 million followers on TikTok, where she documents her life as a Gen Z luxury client. Her videos—high jewelry–centered OOTDs and vlogs of private boutique visits—offer a rare, self-curated window into a demographic that is often discussed but rarely heard from directly. There’s a candid openness that’s transformed her “stay-at-home daughter” platform into a massive brand with viewers eager to live vicariously through every unboxing.
“When I started posting online, I never imagined my expensive taste cultivating an online community of like-minded people who love all things jewelry and sparkly,” Liem shares.
Like most front-facing VICs, Liem isn’t blind to the allure of the lifestyle she lives. She admits that, although she’s a homebody, she’ll sometimes drag herself out of bed and get dressed for a private-client event because she knows her followers will love it. In a time when headlines feel relentlessly grim, audiences have proven more than willing to tune into a parallel universe of champagne-filled fittings and velvet-lined salons. The fascination isn’t new. Society has long been captivated by wealth, but social media has turned VICs into protagonists rather than anonymous patrons.
In the past, power sat almost exclusively with the brands. Ultra-wealthy clients spent, often quietly, with the help of stylists and personal shoppers who mediated taste on their behalf. Today, however, Gen Z VICs—like Liem and other TikTok fixtures such as Becca Bloom and Taylor, who famously withholds her last name—aren’t just consuming luxury. They’re narrating it. They document private appointments, decode limited drops, and position themselves not only as rich but also as discerning. Before them came socialites turned fashion tastemakers like Heart Evangelista and Ivy Getty, who have become front-row figures. With the sudden ability to post on TikTok, these young VICs are becoming critics, commentators, and arbiters of taste in their own right in an attempt to gain legitimacy as capital F fashion people, not just spendy clients.
Not only do [VICs] want to be the most important person in a luxury brand’s ecosystem. They want to be the most important person in the social media ecosystem too.
Louis Pisano
In a media landscape where audiences are increasingly skeptical of polished advertising, the wealthy clients have become more compelling characters than the brand itself. Their opinions can’t be easily swayed with free handbags like those of editors and content creators, and given their ability to add millions of dollars in revenue to a house, the younger generation of VICs is increasingly aware of the power of their platforms.
“I suspect a lot of these VICs want to be influencers,” journalist and fashion commentator Louis Pisano notes. Pisano, known online for his investigative Substack reporting documenting fame, crime, and fashion—most notably, where the money comes from—doesn’t mince words. “You can buy the handbag and the couture pieces, but you can’t buy your way into fame. In my opinion, that’s the next frontier for these VICs. Not only do they want to be the most important person in a luxury brand’s ecosystem. They want to be the most important person in the social media ecosystem too,” Pisano explains. “In turn, it makes them even more powerful than before.” Sure, some clients lead private lives, but one can’t deny the power of a 60-second “Get ready with me to special-order a Birkin bag” reel. In turn, the brand trips and luxury experiences brands front for VICs are just another arm in the content machine feeding gen pop.
It leaves an uncomfortable question: If the luxury machine increasingly performs for the feed while centering the ultra-wealthy, where does that leave everyone else?
Exclusive Access
Despite the gravitational pull of the ultra-wealthy, luxury brands can’t afford to design exclusively upward, no matter how much they try to convince themselves. According to stylists and sales associates, recent creative shake-ups have added a new layer of uncertainty at the top. As fresh leadership settles in—including Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel—some longtime private clients are reportedly taking a more cautious stance. Personal shoppers describe a subtle cooling: fewer automatic orders, more “wait and see” energy. Brands are walking a tightrope as they try to keep top spenders happy while still appealing to aspirational buyers, raising prices without backlash, and pushing new visions without losing loyal clients.
The result has been to rethink entry-level pricing, even by just a little. Earlier this year, a viral graphic illustrated by Business of Fashion announced new pricing structures at Dior and Chanel that expand their lower-priced categories. There are more small leather goods and a few ready-to-wear pieces coming in under €1500. The comment section was telling, though. Regardless of new offerings to keep up with a rising generation of consumers who’d like to buy into a brand, the price difference between a bag charm and an embroidered evening bag remains stark.
As prices keep climbing and experts increasingly question whether quality is always keeping pace, brands still have to make the math make sense for a broader audience, not just billionaires. The aspirational customer may not drive the bulk of revenue, but they drive relevance. They buy the fragrance. They save for the cardholder. They keep the dream circulating.
Fashion has always been about power—who holds it, who displays it, and who interprets it. What feels different now is how visible that negotiation has become between brands, VICs, and the rest of us. In 2026, luxury has never looked so public or felt so private. The 2% cast votes on who stays and who goes with their dollars while the rest of us simply look on, an audience without a vote. In luxury’s new hierarchy, the most powerful people aren’t always in the front row. Sometimes, they’re simply waiting to go upstairs and preorder the entire collection in one fell swoop.
(Image credit: Future)