.couture
Is .couture a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .couture in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. Radix named .couture as the backup string of its .agi application.
A pretty word for fashion labels and boutiques, but few serious brands would make it their main address.
independent fashion designers, bridal and bespoke tailoring studios, and boutique retailers wanting a luxury-sounding web address
Nobody has applied for .couture in its own right.
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: an industry-generic noun that apparel designers, boutiques and labels would hang their primary identity on, selling membership in a trade rather than a company name.
Same bet in the adjacent register: a short French prestige loanword whose entire value is aspirational connotation rather than category coverage, so it must win on how a name feels rather than on who is definitionally eligible.
The same fashion-trade category bet carried by a Romance-language word, so it needs the same registrant type but accepts a language-bounded slice of them instead of the full market.
What a .couture domain is
.couture is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Commerce category. Nobody has applied for .couture in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .couture domain extension real yet?
.couture is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. Nobody has applied for it on the public record; the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round is the process that would decide whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .couture domain?
You can’t yet. A .couture name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .couture was .fashion, delegated on 6 December 2014.
Is .couture a real TLD?
Not yet. .couture is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .couture as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Radix · first recordedICANN
“RTIS2674T-T70599 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · replacement string of .agi”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The string is evocative and memorable in the fashion and luxury segment, and the verified-facts block records one application, from Radix, as a replacement string whose primary application is .agi; no category tag and zero contention are recorded. By analogy (flagged as analogy), existing fashion-themed and luxury-themed TLDs from the earlier round have tended to attract small registration bases, mostly defensive or decorative, with established houses keeping their primary identity on legacy namespaces and little visible aftermarket. 'Couture' is narrower than 'fashion' or 'style': it is a term for bespoke high-end garment-making, which caps the plausible buyer pool to a thin tier of designers, bridal studios, and boutiques, and that tier rarely builds a serious primary identity on a themed TLD. It is not in the 30-49 band because I do not expect volume or price-driven registrations at a sustained level; the word is too specific to be a cheap generic playground, and the buyer group is small. It is not in the 1-9 band because there is a genuine, if shallow, market of aesthetic-minded small fashion businesses who would find the string attractive and would register it as a secondary or vanity address. Main market uncertainty: whether a themed TLD can win primary-identity use among independent designers when the social-platform handle, not the domain, is their main brand surface; if the registry priced and marketed it as a premium namespace with curated adoption, the ceiling could rise toward the low 30s, but by analogy that outcome has been uncommon for single-vertical lifestyle strings.