While most fashion-loving people will splurge on a designer item on occasion, Lauren Amos has upped her love of fashion to new heights.
The Atlanta-based entrepreneur and philanthropist has donated $3.25 million to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to fund fashion exhibitions, a curatorial position and related programs over the next five years.
The Lauren Amos Fashion Project will be the High’s first multifaceted initiative that’s dedicated to fashion design in the museum’s nearly 100-year history. For starters, her namesake project is providing foundational support for “Viktor & Rolf. Fashion Statements,” the first major retrospective in the U.S. that will be dedicated to the Dutch couture designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren. The show will bow on Oct. 10 and run through Feb. 8.
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As a 12-year board member at the museum, Amos’ pledge is in recognition of the High’s previous successful runs with fashion exhibitions including “Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion,” “The Rise of Sneaker Culture” and “Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech,” each of which were held more than five years ago. With her support, the High Museum will be scouting a curator, who will lead the museum’s fashion efforts, including the development of new programs, a scholarship and a major exhibition that is expected to be staged for 2028-29.
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Born and raised in Atlanta, Amos has left her own stamp on the city. Three years ago she founded and opened Ant/Dote, a multibrand luxury and lifestyle boutique in Atlanta. With a selective eye, her store offers some labels that are not easy to find in her home city, including Balenciaga, Rick Owens, Alaïa, Phoebe Philo, Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Issey Miyake, Willy Chavarria and more. Amos also used her exacting outlook to start Wish Atlanta or simply “Wish Atl,” one of the nation’s only women-owned and -operated streetwear boutiques.
With her unmistakable, and daring style, Amos can exemplify how fashion can be art. For example, at last month’s “House Party” for the 25th anniversary of the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards, she turned up in an elaborate silver polyurethane gown designed by Melitta Baumeister. NDA’s 2025 winner for fashion had also made Amos a coordinating clutch with extended cutlery so that she could dine unencumbered by her oversize metallic sleeves at the table she was hosting. Amos told WWD how she had figured out how to use fashion as a tool — to push people away with it or draw people in with it. And even though her thoughts were with a terminally ill friend, whom she had visited earlier that day in the hospital, Amos said her dress had been such a conversation starter that it had brought her into a better space. “It’s almost like a performance piece,” Amos said at the Cooper Hewitt.
Amos’ charitable efforts include supporting Meals on Wheels Atlanta and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. She also serves on the boards of the Wish Foundation and the Daniel P. Amos Family Foundation, and she recently launched the “Wish Atl Sneaker Design Scholarship” at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Describing the High Museum as having been “a source of wonder” to her for so many years, Amos said “this opportunity to showcase fashion as a true artform inside one of the nation’s premier museums is a dream come true. Creativity can challenge, inspire and unite people, and the High demonstrates that so beautifully. I look forward to the conversations and ideas that this project will spark, and I’m honored to play a small role in shaping what’s to come.”
The High Museum of Art’s director Rand Suffolk said, “We are so grateful to Lauren for her vision and look forward to bringing exquisite examples of creativity, extraordinary craft and innovation to the city of Atlanta.”