Individuality! Opulence! Soft Power! Romance! The spring/summer 2025 collections brought many ideas into focus, but perhaps the biggest takeaways from fashion month were a renewed sense of lightness and softness as well as a return to personal style. This is a notable shift away from fashion centered on minimalism, quiet luxury, and practical wearability, which has dominated for the past several seasons. Instead, there is a sense of joy returning to fashion and renewed energy around the art of getting dressed.
We’ve already seen personality pieces enter into wardrobes in the form of unexpected items such as pillbox hats, but that has only been dialed up as designers call attention to highly personal looks. Brands such as Prada and Valentino made the case for this, bringing individuality back to fashion on the runway though inventive styling. Chanel returned to the Grand Palais after a four-year renovation, ushering the lightness of the space into the collection—a sensibility that permeated throughout fashion month overall. We even saw this movement toward softer palettes and more romantic silhouettes from brands such as Khaite that have come to be known for darker, edgier collections. Bottega Veneta, too, felt whimsical, using childlike playfulness as a point of inspiration. Saint Laurent was able to tap into several of the season’s bigger themes, including soft power and opulence. The accessory of 2025 arrived in the form of modern peep-toe shoes at Tory Burch and ACNE Studios. There is a lot to unpack from the runway collections in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, and ahead are the key takeaways.
Here, see the nine spring/summer 2025 trends that are set to dominate fashion in the coming year and shop the key pieces to adopt now.
What’s come to be known as corporatecore has had a hand in fashion for years now. Following lockdown, people became surprisingly excited about the concept of putting on a suit or any office-appropriate ensemble instead of sweatpants for their 9-to-5s. For spring 2025, designers began to soften the once sharp tailoring that fell under this aesthetic, moving beyond traditional suiting in some cases and crafting a wardrobe for the modern working person who wants to look work-ready but still chic and comfortable. They still project power and influence with their ensembles, but now, it’s in a far less obvious and intimidating fashion. At Ferragamo, Gabriela Hearst, and Stella McCartney, this energy manifested itself by way of subtly slouchy trench coats paired with pumps and structured handbags. The Row, Bottega Veneta, Christopher Esber, and, most notably, Saint Laurent, displayed the “soft power” look in the form of oversize suiting styled alongside cool accessories—from statement eyewear to cuff bracelets.
The fall/winter 2024 runways saw red—the color that had dominated the fashion circuit for over a year—ascend from just another trend to timeless status before our eyes. More shades of the color appeared, particularly burgundy, but instead of feeling like a short-lived fad, every variation of red on the runways appeared to be just as wearable as the many black, cream, and gray ensembles we saw in spades. All of that is to say that red’s promotion made room for a new color trend to reach ubiquity the following season, and powder pink was quick to fill that spot. Throughout the spring/summer 2025 shows, powder pink garnered attention from the powers that be in fashion with a heavy showing in New York at Alaïa, Khaite, and Brandon Maxwell and in Milan and Paris at Miu Miu, Chanel, Valentino, and Jil Sander. Though not exactly groundbreaking for spring, the soft shade did feel fresh and airy compared to some of the darker colors we’ve come to expect from these brands, Khaite in particular.
With the rise of micro-trends on the internet and social media platforms, there has been a sameness to style, but have we lost touch with our personal style? That seemed to be the question designers were contemplating on the runways. This became clear at Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons discussed the era of internet algorithms and emphasized a return to personal style on the runways. Rather than a concrete theme like we have come to expect at Prada, the sensibilities changed from look to look, and each model seemed to have a different sense of style. This continued throughout the season with looks that emphasized individuality and personal style. This often came down to styling.
At Chloé, an all-black look felt personal with the addition of a pillbox hat, oversize sunglasses, and layers of gold jewelry. Similarly, head-to-toe black stood apart at Gucci with a skirt that was finished with a wide-brimmed hat and leather gloves. In other collections such as Miu Miu and Marni, this was achieved by mixing unexpected prints. What really solidified the trend, however, was Alessandro Michele’s debut runway collection for Valentino, which was one of the most anticipated shows at Paris Fashion Week. While the pieces in the collection were a tribute to the Valentino archives and house codes, the styling suggested personal ways to wear them that brought a sense of individuality to the forefront of the fashion conversation.
On several occasions throughout the spring/summer 2025 season, we witnessed looks be sent down the runway that undoubtedly drew from Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s sophisticated and modern sense of style. These ensembles displayed the air of simplicity and elegance that so many late ’90s socialites and publicists did with Prada, Yohji Yamamoto, and Calvin Klein. Just like hers, they featured slight touches—be it a subtle, cool styling trick or an unexpected tailoring or accessory choice. Come spring, these details will make people turn and wonder who the person wearing them is and how they, too, can get their look. Dubbed by us “the modern socialite,” this savvy dresser has the very best taste, gets invited to everything, and always shows up in something worth saving to a mood board.
For spring 2025, those looks will include Max Mara’s classic black-and-white shirt and pencil skirt with its peekaboo black bikini underneath; Tove’s high-neck, sheer maxi dress with its wide, waist-accentuating belt; and Toteme’s butter-yellow satin minidress fit with an attached scarf. For added measure, add black tights and a bright-red lip.
“Opulence” is one of the words that hit the lips of showgoers throughout the season as designers continued to debut extravagant looks on the runways. In recent years, quiet luxury and minimalism have set the tone for style largely rooted in simplicity and pared-back pieces. For spring 2025, however, we’ve seeing the opposite play out with a return to the unbridled maximalism that has been absent from fashion for many seasons. At Saint Laurent, we saw this in the form of brocade jackets, ruffled satin skirts, high-neck lace tops, and gemstone-encrusted pumps. At Loewe, dramatic, sculptural jackets were executed in gleaming mother-of-pearl. At Dries Van Noten, tapestry-print satin jackets were paired with heavily embellished pencil skirts. This new sense of opulence takes on a “more is more” approach to style that is ornate, lavish, and undeniably grand.
The moment the Tory Burch show concluded at the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, editors began discussing the peep-toe heels from the runway. The shoes were designed with a towering and curved heel, glossy finish, and cutout peep toe positioned near the inner corners—an instant must-have item on our 2025 shopping lists. It was also one of the first glimpses at the peep-toe trend that swept the collections. At Khaite, minimal pumps with a micro cutout hit the runway. At ACNE Studios, slingbacks were finished with a spherical peep toe and an elongated, squared-off silhouette. At Prada, the designers resurrected styles from the archives, including a fall/winter 2008 version that was notably released during one of the last times peep-toe shoes were widely popular. Now, its comeback is sweeping and imminent. Instead of more traditional styles, the peep-toe heels of 2025 are returning with modern takes that reimagine the classic cutout shoes.
It’s cuffing season, and nowhere was that mindset more prevalent than at the spring/summer 2025 shows across New York, London, Paris, and Milan. The fashion world, like us, is craving romance and expressing itself via soft, sheer, and flowing chiffon fabrics in ethereal shades and delicate floral patterns that immediately evoke images of a Keira Knightley period piece filmed in a grassy countryside at the peak of summer. At Chanel, airiness and flight were the cornerstones of its S/S 25 collection, with capes and feathers both finding places on models wearing transparent materials in a brightly lit Grand Palais. Chemena Kamali’s sophomore collection for Chloé was the perfect continuation of her first, including bubble hems, lingerie-like lace, and florals, all through a bohemian lens. At Khaite, Creative Director Catherine Holstein utilized see-through fabrics and pale shades to cue a shift in her design strategy catalyzed by motherhood, according to an interview from Vogue.
You’ve heard of the wrong-shoe theory, a styling trick coined by stylist Allison Bornstein that involves pairing an outfit with shoes that would normally feel mismatched or incorrect to create a more interesting, adventurous ensemble. But have you heard of the wrong-jacket theory? Probably not, which makes sense given that we just made it up. The spring/summer 2025 runways made it abundantly clear that personal style and individualism will reign supreme when warmer weather arrives later on next year, and one of the many ways that that was showcased was in the form of stylists topping looks with seemingly incompatible jacket options, specifically sporty and technical silhouettes. See sequin dresses at Prada, Brandon Maxwell, Rabanne, and Burberry combined with clashing outerwear, from nylon zip-ups to fur-trimmed parkas. In other words, expect the unexpected, and don’t be afraid to play around with your top layers when spring arrives.
Textiles are taking on more tactile forms, which are showing up in a number of iterations in the spring/summer 2025 collections. Whether soft-to-the-touch feathers or twisting fringe that showcases a new sense of engineering in fabrics, the pieces automatically inspire a want of touch. Alaïa introduced voluminous, spiraled fringe coats, and Proenza Schouler executed fringe in the form of miniskirts and strapless dresses. Chanel added a playful, light touch to romantic feathers, while Loewe took on feathers in a modern way that fused them into a textile nearly resembling a woven fabric. Khaite layered pom-pom skirts under tailored outerwear. Bottega Veneta showcased hats that resembled rubber Koosh balls from childhood. Each look took on textiles in a touchable, feel-good way, emphasizing a renewed exploration of outside-the-ordinary textures.
Source: WhoWhatWear
