SPRING / SUMMER 2025 TRENDS
HOW IT FEELS TO SAY “BUT, MIND YOU” WHEN TELLING A STORY IN FASHION
SS25’s strongest plot line refocuses us on the art of juxtaposition. The makeshift human can live life down to anecdotal ingredients: peanut butter goes with jelly, blue and black don’t mix, don’t be a hat person if, at your core, you’re only thinking about being a hat person the entire time you’re wearing one. Thoughtless boundaries can dictate life if we aren’t conscious of taking a third perspective into why we subscribe to such weird parameters. When quiet luxury and a “less is more for engagement” tribunal in an era of extreme information dominates the media mix, it’s difficult to differentiate what fashion should make the cultural protagonist. In SS25, it’s itself. SS25 draws attention to the balance of extremes: embellishment and utility. There’s no reason your outdoor clothing shouldn’t be treated as evening wear or that your minimalistic approach shouldn’t include accoutrements. It’s a windbreaker where a windbreaker should not be, paired with a luxe, beaded skirt at The Attico. It’s seasonless colors—rich greens and reds—anoraks at Burberry paired with sequined dresses. The Hermes tomboy is dually a sensual dresser. The Gucci girl is glamour in a trench. It’s a satire take that is heavily aligned with the highbrow art world, or just enough of an eye roll to find the irony in the very joke of it all. High culture reference, low culture digest, and appropriately funny misgivings. Fashion loves the internet. This complex duality of the SS25 woman is translated through styling, a strong POV we rarely celebrate across the runway nor have the opportunity to champion. At Prada, the devious minds of Miuccia and Raf do this seamlessly by creating an absolute eyesore down the runway. The wrong coat with the wrong feathered dress, the wrong colored tights with an expertly tailored overcoat, and the absolute incorrect hat (holes included) and sunglasses (jumpscare, butterfly aesthetic) with a chic suiting ensemble. It’s an antagonistic rollercoaster top to bottom, highlighting the importance of how we perceive fashion and how we actually digest fashion. It’s otherworldly outside of calling it an everyday organza. It’s pure chaos. A direct move against the derivative. This season is making evident that fashion shouldn’t make a linear, cohesive story. Fashion is references; it’s emotive, and it’s inconclusive. It’s really, to the core, strange if you attempt to make it make sense. Yuhan Wang can have a jersey with bubble miniskirts. No21 can throw an awkward scarf on anything. SS25 is to remind you that fashion has the ability to step outside the everyday cycle. Prada, Bottega, Loewe, any big name house in SS25 is translating the subsidiary of the imitative: expression unedited.
A CERTAIN KIND OF PANACHE
Sometimes it really can just come down to a moment in time, and for SS25, that’s primary on the moodboard. Amidst a season of brilliantly sharp wit (and a bit of goading), there lies a margin of refinement that has given a lot of houses more depth to their collections. If SS25 was built to take up space and be the drama, the side plot of the season was the ability to hone in on a singular sentiment or thoughtful mechanism. For Burberry, she’s simply caught in the rain. At Gucci, sunset hues and rich reds played out the winding down of a really gorgeous day. Bottega Veneta brought you back to seeing life through the eyes of a child while sitting in an animal chair surrounded by friends. Reversely, the moment could be the components. Prada, Ganni, and Acne sent down exaggerated, intentful silhouettes. Countless brands, including Loewe, Erdem, and Yuhan Wang, ushered in 18th century panniers. At Ferragamo, Moschino, and Missoni fringe was the focus. A soft flow possessed Chloe and Alaia. Moschino, Erdem, and Fendi perfected the 1920’s flapper. The focal point was point-blank artisanal work, an anchor to fashion that can be celebrated when you adopt a defined mindset in place of constant movement. This is contradictory to the entire mindset of SS25, which, in a twisted way, is exactly in harmony with the overriding tone: deny repetition, embrace the unlikely.
WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY I WANT TO WORK REMOTELY
Return to office calls, a pivotal election, a general non-joie de vivre life when you have to pay +20% markup on your weekly grocery run; our day-to-day lives haven’t reached this level of bootleg chaos since the last resurgence of Americana workwear. Fashion’s strong suit has always been possessing the ability to reflect modernity in a way that makes emotive movements and social underpinnings a visual experience for history. Take 1940’s, 1980’s, and even 2008 fashion when suiting crazes had you and your next door neighbor in workwear seeking timelessness, quality, and durability. We can even nod to cultural moments that have elevated the suiting to social signage of power and notoriety. American Psycho, the Civil Rights Movement, Jazz. Recession to suiting pipeline—the old trickle-down effect. Fashion is a mirror of society. What we’re witnessing in SS25 is the tried and true reform of fashion under a microscope of recession: a return to fine tailoring and business-forward appeals. In times of volatile economic stress, fashion leans towards taking a formal approach. The vision is to get everyone back to work to make that money. It feels natural to put fine tailoring hand in hand with a streamlined notion, but here in SS25 there is an overwhelming aura of headstrong purpose. We’re now suiting up in order to double down. SS25’s womenswear take on this low-steered oscillation is to direct the suiting reproach to a narrative that doesn’t diminish power but instead fuels it. Wider shoulders, oversized trousers, and boxy eyewear are key structural elements that relinquish delicacy in place of controlled femininity. Look to CFDA Designer of the Year, Willy Chavarria. His vision of American style, zoot suits, oversized flannels, and full trousers is poised with the energy of American immigrants. That’s power. At Bottega Veneta, oversized, crumpled oxfords are seen with oversized blazers and longline waistcoats, like a child carelessly dressing in their parent’s clothes to take on the world. That’s power. We see these narratives that challenge the confines of traditional work environments play out across SS25, from Stella McCartney’s layering to AREA’s hat to suit combos. Each nod to unconventional workwear acted as a vehicle to amplify the crucial message that the SS25 woman doesn’t need masculine archetypes or an enthusiastic offering to be viewed as strong. She takes up space, and with that unconventional space comes control and purpose. There is no challenged notion, which is a large departure from corporate culture and encapsulates an equative gender shift. What does success look like today? Who is this puissant woman? She’s coming for you suited in f*cking Saint Laurent is who she is.
I LOVE WHEN I SEE A CLASSIC COMBO IRL
High fashion has met the sports world head-on, and the growing number of sports motifs and color-blocking has diluted the collegiate stripe to grant a more sophisticated message: sports can be sleek, too. Prep-turned-athletic aesthetics and stadium styling core have evolved into decisive nonchalance. The most notable take on this was seen with collaborations in SS25. AVAVAV x Adidas pulled through with the most successful viral runway, but that’s second in part to how polished and streamlined the track suits were, or even the compescence of the rugby and hot pant. Elsewhere, The Attico x Nike pulled off the same beautiful antithesis: sporty, nylon, and rainproof trousers with a chic, oversized blazer. Untraditional sporty materials are meeting major high fashion references. Attendance saw prep legacies Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren adopt the same approach they did in the 90s, bringing back an air of thoughtful streetwear to extremely chic, upper-class coding in brick reds and classic navy. It’s laid-back but polished. This energetic feel was also seen at Jil Sander, where a baseball shirt saw luxury fabric on a timeless aesthetic. It’s a perfect blending of classic prep signage with a little extra “capital f” fashion love. Feel that validation when reaching for the go-to knit v-neck this season.
TWO BOUDOIR GIRLS TALKING TO EACH OTHER LIKE EXACTLYYYY
Alignment in SS25 was key, and following subsequently with a cinema of emboldened shape and extremely considered styling is a nod towards all things boudoir that has shaped the new season of core femininity. A mood of romantic revelry has superimposed last season’s coquette, peachy woman, allowing her to mature into a beguiling creature—sensual and incredibly intelligent. There was an overarching vintage aesthetic to those that adopted the sultry beat: Gucci’s lace, Chloe’s layered wispiness, and Christopher Esber’s decadent, feathered insouciance. Ambiances that took your breath away, full stop. This heralds in a contemporary examination of the theme of beauty: what is beauty today? SS25 finds beauty in moods of bygone eras, sheer flirting, and charm in constructed attitude. Bras and bloomers have become staples for a wardrobe, and the return of London staple Nensi Douala confirmed as much with her effortless sculptures of sheer bralettes and tulle floating down the runway. It’s all very whimsical, diaphanous. In that lightness we are able to understand the sultry allure referencing period drama: she’s a creature, ethereal even, and extremely clever. We see the strongest narrative of both this attitude and SS25’s intense styling play out at Valentino, where Alessandro Michele, and I don’t use this word lightly, bewitched us into the new Valentino world. She was flouncy, vintage, demode of modernity in lace tights, flouncy milliners, and decadent color. “I was looking for something that had been forgotten,” Michele noted. Richness and recklessness. SS25’s deceptive beauty.
SHE HAS RANGE
The most notable position womenswear consistently possesses across seasons is the ability to find multifaceted charm where you least expect it. In SS25, it’s her range of expression. Beyond the scope of misaligned styling, obsessive accoutrement, and colorless boundaries, we can also see a strong theme of womenswear reimagining conventional perfection, spanning from overarching aesthetics down to our singular basics. To start with a wide lens, we see multiple angles of textured layering with sheers and strict fabrics from brands like Hermes, Stella McCartney, and Victoria Beckham being used to give depth to an otherwise dismissive workwear performance. We see the formal shirt develop into an asymmetric staple paired with bold accessories, an otherwise dismissed peep-toe shoe, and strapless bandeaus. In suit, the entire coding of workwear is mutated into hybrids and halfsies across Bottega Veneta, Courreges, AWAKE, and Rabamme. Is that... a one-legged pant? It is. Deconstruction is an extremely important theme in SS25, as the intellectualization of the norm has turned things inside out, upside down, and thrown off-kilter anyone that has ever thought we could just wear clothes and it be simple. This is reflected further at Prada, Ferragamo, and Diesel, where wrinkled uniforms walk down the runway and reckon the ideal of perfection. It ushers in the acceptance of one’s limits: the SS25 woman is multifaceted, multilayered. She isn’t just one ideal; she’s a range of emotions, disorder even. There is an incredible amount of excess thought thrown into the illusion of disarray, which begs the proposition that her range might not be such a mess at all. It could just be clever provocation and a slap of satire.