Five outfits that show where fashion is headed
Between New York’s fall fashion collections and Kendrick Lamar’s flared jeans at the Super Bowl, it’s been a week of style surprises.
New York Fashion Week is a quieter affair these days, with major draws such as The Row choosing to show in Paris again, and others such as Proenza Schouler skipping the runway this season. But for those who braved the snow flurries to schlep from South Street Seaport to Madison Avenue, there were plenty of rewards, from promising young designers Diotima and Colleen Allen to solid showings from stalwarts including Coach and Michael Kors. Look closely at individual looks and you’ll see bellwethers of the state of fashion. Here are five prescient outfits that indicate what we’ll be wearing—and even thinking about—come fall.
Craftsmanship worth shelling out for
Fforme, a minimalist start-up launched in 2022, has quickly developed a cult following for its pure luxury pieces for working women. This floor-length, navy wool-silk opera coat, with 60 meters of hand-frayed ribbon, is the kind of forever item that’s both modest and sensational. It would be a beautiful gift for a high-school graduate or her grandmother. “Comfort is luxurious,” said the brand’s new creative director Frances Howie of the piece, and it could be worn as easily over a T-shirt and jeans as an evening gown.
As the luxury-to-Zara pipeline gets ever quicker and more clever, many luxury brands trumpet their commitment to craft. Up close, Fforme’s structured blazers and pleated trench coats are thoughtfully constructed. Howie perfects the handmade feel with generations-deep Italian factories, challenging them to leave some bits unfinished. “These things are not completely perfect because women are not perfect,” she said. Convincing craftsmanship may be the best argument for luxury today.
The return of business attire
While Calvin Klein has pumped out viral underwear and denim campaigns in recent years, its high-end Collection business has been dormant since designer Raf Simons left six years ago. The Italian designer Veronica Leoni, an alum of Phoebe Philo’s Celine and The Row, came in to wake up the Sleeping Beauty. Her collection, shown to an audience that included the 82-year-old Klein himself, was a promising debut full of accessible tailoring.
When’s the last time you saw someone wear a skirt suit in real life? The staple of Klein’s time appears ready for its comeback. Leoni, whose debut was full of accessible tailoring, said this structured light-grey wool jacket and pencil skirt, with matching grey pumps, was one of her favourite moments of the show. She said the “office-girl vibe” was “intellectually sexy.”
Return-to-office mandates are coming fast and furious to American workplaces from Amazon to the federal government. The “office siren” and “corpcore” trends are making traditional workwear suddenly intriguing to young worker-bees who’ve spent much of the past five years scrolling TikTok in soft pants. Could the skirt suit signal a return to formality, or will the skirt half gather dust when women pair their blazers with jeans?
A call to dress audaciously
Forty years in, Marc Jacobs’s ready-to-wear collections have become increasingly avant-garde, with cartoonish shoes and exaggerated proportions. Alex Consani, the first transgender woman to win model of the year at London’s Fashion Awards in 2024, wore a pillowy ruby-red velvet dress to close the brand’s show. With her hands on her hips and her lips studded with red crystals applied by makeup legend Pat McGrath, Consani was a Gen Z version of Betty Boop. It’s a classic cocktail look, thrown through the blender of Japanese design influence and contemporary culture.
Jacobs no longer speaks to the press after his shows but releases cryptic show notes, this time on the theme of courage. “Guided by heart, humility and gratitude, I have come to understand that fear is not my enemy—It is a necessary companion to creativity, authenticity, integrity and life,” he wrote. It’s as though he’s daring himself to enter the leagues of his experimental design idols Miuccia Prada and Rei Kawakubo, the latter of whose 1997 “lumps and bumps” Comme des Garçons collection clearly inspired this dress. While most of us will not wear a bulging cocktail dress to our next event, its audacity might inspire us to think originally.
Sportswear with a twist
Tory Burch is still a go-to for Greenwich matriarchs’ gold-crested “Reva” flats and utterly correct tennis skirts—but it’s also become a destination for their hip daughters to buy off-kilter separates and slightly strange accessories.
This Tory ensemble takes classics such as a wool cardigan, track pants and monk-strap shoes, and flips them around. As Burch said, “I started with the concept of twisted American sportswear, literally and figuratively.” The sweater is twisted around a top and fastened with a brooch, while the sweatpants are made of fluffy Japanese brushed jersey. In shades of brown, it’s an eclectic mix of Upper and Lower East Side.
“It was an exploration of classic ideas that aren’t what you first perceive them to be,” Burch said of her collection. So a pair of high-end track pants like these, when combined with a deconstructed cardigan and granny accessories, becomes an outfit that deserves a second look. The collection also echoes the popularity of fashion Substack newsletters, where unique personal style is almost a competition. Pulled apart, these outfits offer interesting updates for most wardrobes. Saying that there’s “something for everyone” is a bit of a cliche, but that concept was really driven home by the many mother-daughter duos attending the show, including Saturday Night Live cast member Chloe Fineman and her mum.
Dare to flare
Not all culture-quaking looks come from the runway. On Super Bowl Sunday, during the thick of fashion week, Kendrick Lamar performed his halftime show in flared jeans that got more airtime than quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
The US$1,300 pants, long enough to pool around his (also viral) Nike Air DT Max ‘96 sneakers, were made by French luxury brand Celine and are now sold out. Hedi Slimane, who instituted the 1970s-evoking style before he left the LVMH fashion house late last year, has long been a proponent of painstakingly re-created vintage jeans styles. While expensive, they’re considered the ne plus ultra of denim by aficionados.
Lamar’s jeans are sure to be copied ad infinitum by young men—and women eager to break free from the dominant straight-cut and skinny jeans. The flare may be the first truly breakout trend of 2025.
The Wall Street Journal
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