When Simon Porte Jacquemus teased the announcement of his first-ever brand ambassador, attention turned to the obvious candidates from his A-list inner circle, like Dua Lipa or Blackpink’s Jennie. But when the announcement arrived, the designer had swapped celebrity for something far less replicable: his personal history. The brand’s first ambassador is his grandmother, Liline.
“Before Jacquemus existed, she was already my inspiration,” Jacquemus wrote on Instagram, announcing the move. “Her strength, her elegance, her authenticity… she shaped the way I see women, and the way I imagine this maison.”
“Friends and family casting is a reminder that even within fashion’s most performative moments, there are real humans at the center,” says Katie Devlin, fashion trends editor at Stylus. “There’s a sense of distrust simmering across the board. Consumers are growing weary of slick and glossy perfection, so family and community casting feels like a breath of fresh air when done correctly.”
As artificial intelligence accelerates replication, influencer culture reaches saturation, and global crisis seeps into the consumer consciousness, the industry’s reliance on scale as a proxy for value is losing traction. In a market bloated with spectacle and increasingly disconnected displays of wealth, amplification alone is no longer enough. Distinction is being recalibrated around what cannot be automated or reproduced, and personal history has emerged as a point of differentiation for today’s creative directors. Across the Fall/Winter 2026 season so far, we’ve seen designers pay homage to the family members, mentors, artisans, and models that have shaped them and their careers.
Before his recent Dior Haute Couture debut for spring 2026, creative director Jonathan Anderson invited his design “hero” John Galliano, Dior’s creative director from 1997 to 2011, to the atelier for a preview. For the show invitation, guests received a small posy of cyclamen tied with black silk ribbon, an homage to a bouquet Galliano had brought to the visit. “The most beautiful flowers I had ever seen,” Anderson wrote on Instagram, explaining that he wanted everyone to receive the same gesture that had marked the collection’s beginning. This acknowledgment of and respect for his predecessor is a gesture rarely extended in an industry inclined to sever creative lineage rather than reference it.
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Anderson also invited atelier artisan Paulette Boncoure — who began working at Dior in 1947 — to attend the couture show, a decision that was widely welcomed online. “Finally, someone worthy of being recognized for their hard work and passion. She deserves more attention than those influencers,” one user commented on Instagram. Following the show, Dior mounted an exhibition of the looks, inviting schoolchildren to visit and draw the pieces. “My dream for Dior Haute Couture was more than just a fashion show,” Anderson wrote in a post about the schoolchildren, which has since garnered more than 125,000 likes. “I wanted it to be something to share with everyone.”
This emphasis on personal connection felt especially resonant given the wider context in which the recent men’s and couture seasons unfolded. While luxury houses seldom directly address the geopolitical climate, they are responding to growing consumer fear and skepticism by leading with emotionally resonant narratives, experts agree.
“Against the backdrop of AI acceleration and sociopolitical instability, people don’t want to be treated like data points. They want to feel recognized and form meaningful connections with the brands they choose,” Devlin says. This increasingly means brands trading spectacle for something harder to manufacture: meaning and connection, built through human relationships and stories that feel grounded in lived experience rather than engineered for scale.
When the runway gimmick stops working
For much of the past decade, the runway playbook was built around the viral stunt. Earned media value depended on a moment engineered to break through feeds: a dress spray-painted live onto Bella Hadid at Coperni; models wading through mud at Balenciaga; Avavav’s Run Way, where models sprinted down the runway with tear-streaked makeup, as trash was thrown at them by the audience.
That logic is now losing force. As consumers gain greater access to information about how fashion operates, spectacle untethered from meaning has a shorter shelf life. Stunts engineered for virality are more easily decoded, and just as easily dismissed. “Viewers and consumers are hard to fool now,” Mandy Lee, trend forecaster and author of “Cyclical” Substack, says. “People are more informed and more discerning. The moments that stay with us come from genuine love, respect, and trust. You just can’t manufacture them.”
Designers who are resonating today are doing so by enabling emotion rather than scripting it. Lee points to Chanel under Matthieu Blazy. During his debut, closing model Awar Odhiang went viral not for a choreographed finale, but for a spontaneous, joyful exchange with the designer — clapping, twirling in her colorful ball skirt, and embracing Blazy as Snap!’s “Rhythm Is a Dancer” played.
“It was completely unscripted and spontaneous and in the moment,” Odhiang told Vogue shortly after the show. “I was speaking with Matthieu before the show… He had told me, ‘This is your moment, this is a chance for you to just enjoy it, do what you do, and do you.’” This moment marked a rare display of humility, as the creative director relinquished total control of his debut moment and trusted that meaning could merge without being engineered.
A similar dynamic played out during the Chanel Métiers d’Art show in New York, which was opened by Indian model Bhavitha Mandava, marking the first model of Indian heritage to do so for the house. In the hours that followed, a video she shared of her parents reacting to the moment quickly circulated online. “Can’t put into words how much this means to me,” Mandava captioned the clip, which now has over 2.5 million likes. “Their joy is contagious. It’s the purest thing to witness,” wrote one commenter.
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“Designers’ jobs now are to inspire organic moments of emotion and let that drive engagement,” Lee says. “That’s not always going to work, because you actually have to inspire people. But when it has worked, it’s really worked.” Even for audiences ambivalent about the clothes themselves, the emotional resonance of those moments builds long-term brand affinity, she adds. “Fashion wants so badly to manufacture every moment, but the moments that stick are unrehearsed.”
Lee points to Willy Chavarria as a blueprint for what genuine community engagement can look like. For his FW26 show, the designer surprised 400 fashion fans — who thought they were attending creator Lyas’s La Watch Party to watch the show on a screen — with tickets for the runway. “What Willy did [for FW26] was incredible,” Lee says. “He’s such a pioneer when it comes to community. Even the way he casts his models — he almost exclusively street casts. And he’s [largely] independent, so he’s answering to his community rather than a conglomerate.” (Following minority stake investment from Chalhoub Group in 2025, Chavarria remains the majority shareholder of his company.) Lee also notes that Chavarria has used his runway shows as a platform for explicit political commentary, including direct references to ICE and the criminalization of immigrant communities.
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By contrast, fashion commentator Anastasia Vartanian is realistic about the limitations facing larger houses, which can tell personal stories, but are unlikely to engage in more political topics. “I think big brands will always feel a bit disconnected, because it’s their job to sell products and make money, not to inspire us. But I think the vision of the creative director ends up connecting with people,” she says. Direct political commentary is often off the table, but that doesn’t mean emotional resonance is. Instead, those connections tend to emerge through the vision of the creative director.
What unites these examples is not scale, but restraint. In a cultural moment shaped by fatigue and distrust, fashion’s most effective runway moments are no longer the loudest or most expensive. They are the ones that allow space for moments that audiences recognize as real, and therefore worth remembering.
