Column #15 - What is Mark Zuckerberg doing at Prada’s FW Runway?

A tech billionaire walks into Prada. It’s not the beginning of a bad joke, but is it the start of the runway show?

The fashion society likes to say they’re at runway shows for the clothes. And on paper, that’s still true. But anyone who’s been to a show lately knows something has shifted lately, past the black SUVs, publicists, and bodyguards looking over someone whose IMDb page you vaguely recognize. 

It wasn’t always like this: originally, fashion shows were closer to business meetings with better lighting. The editors were taking notes, the buyers were calculating orders, and the clients were deciding what would live in their wardrobes in about six months. Fifty people in a salon, maybe a hundred if things were going particularly well. And now, there’s always the half hour before the show where no one is looking at the runway: they’re all looking across it. 

Who’s watching?

At Milan this week, the collections have been strong, thoughtful, might I say. Designers discussed legacy, succession, and the future after the founding figures step back. Serious conversations for serious clothes. And yet, the images circulating globally are much less coats, silhouettes, or tailoring innovations than they are Mark Zuckerberg sitting front row at Prada. 

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Fashion has always loved high-yielding men discovering knitwear, which makes the news not as surprising as it would have been when Yves Saint Laurent was at Yves Saint Laurent. But his presence perfectly summarizes what Fashion Week has become. It’s become news. His attendance linked fashion to Silicon Valley speculation, smart glasses collaborations, and the broader merging of luxury with technology. 

The runway lasted fifteen minutes. The clothes are forever. The front row will last an entire news cycle. And Milan has doubled down on this logic. At Fendi, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut drew crowds as interested in Uma Thurman and Monica Bellucci as in the fur silhouettes. I conclude culture, celebrity, controversy, and purses are all equally photogenic. 

The Runway vs. The Algorithm 

None of this, to me at least, means the clothes matter less. But it complicates an older assumption: that Fashion Week exists primarily for fashion professionals. Today, shows happen in two places at once: the physical room and the media ecosystem surrounding it. Visibility no longer ends at the venue doors; it expands through whoever happens to be seated inside, and about three different livestreams on Instagram. 

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In short, has the invitation list become fashion’s most honest press release? The show isn’t just the performance anymore: recognition travels faster than critique, and presence occasionally outweighs expertise. The clothes remain the excuse, and a very beautiful one, but the event has expanded into something closer to broadcasting disguised as tradition. The show still works: everyone comes for different reasons, and somehow leaves talking about the same thing. Or updating their status.