The fall 2025 shows may have ended, but the trends found on the runways in New York, London, Milan, and Paris are still fresh in our minds. While each brand presented a distinct vision for the pivotal season, as always, certain themes and throughlines connected the collections.
The fall 2025 shows may have ended, but the trends found on the runways in New York, London, Milan, and Paris are still fresh in our minds. While each brand presented a distinct vision for the pivotal season, as always, certain themes and throughlines connected the collections.
October 31, 2025
The fall 2025 shows may have ended, but the trends found on the runways in New York, London, Milan, and Paris are still fresh in our minds. While each brand presented a distinct vision for the pivotal season, as always, certain themes and throughlines connected the collections.
If there was a single roar that echoed across the FW25 runways, it came not from the models’ heels but from the resurgence of faux fur. Designers made it clear: this is no longer the nostalgic echo of bohemian glamour, but a new manifesto of texture.
Sweeping in with unapologetic volume, it wrapped itself around nearly every collection, from knee-length coats at Fendi to cropped, boxy jackets at Miu Miu. And just when the trend seemed contained, Simone Rocha disrupted the softness with a fur dress slashed daringly at the thigh, an unexpected seduction beneath the plush. Faux fur is divisive, yes - equal parts excess and ethics, but its surge across the season suggests that it has become the defining pelt of our time. Plush handbags, oversized stoles, and coats that swallowed the body whole all played into the fantasy. The message was not subtle: FW25 is ready to swaddle itself in artifice, yet claim the moral high ground.
From this drama of fur emerged another trend, lace. Not the boudoir seduction of old, nor the frothy ruffles of costume drama.
Lace, stripped of nostalgia, spoke in neutral tones at Dior and Zimmermann, its fragility disciplined into form. At Valentino, the same fabric became a paradox: chastity rendered seductive. It was revealing, but in a restrained, almost architectural way. In a season where bombast seemed to lead, lace offered a counterpoint, an elegance that breathed between threads, feminine yet controlled, romantic without sentimentality.
And then there were the shoulders. Once the preserve of the power suit, FW25 broadened its reach.
Stella McCartney sculpted them into quiet armor, Dries Van Noten magnified them into gestures of presence. And at Chloé, the shoulder lost its edge, linen draped over structure until strength felt strangely feminine. No longer an accessory to corporate armor, the power shoulder is now the punctuation mark of eveningwear. It brought a sculpted geometry to otherwise fluid fabrics, a sharpness that sliced through the softness of silks and draped velvets.
This season, the pencil skirt has returned with the poise of a woman who knows exactly where she is going, yet refuses to be confined to the office.
At Ermanno Scervino, she is an office siren; at Carolina Herrera and Bally, she turns preppy into something warmer, wiser, more assured. Designers teased out its versatility with oversized knitwear slouched just so, corseted strapless bodices, and blouses that fluttered with a near-frivolous femininity. By night, the silhouette held its ground, reimagined in lace or shimmering embroidery that could make even the most jaded couture eye pause.
Few patterns roar quite like leopard, an eternal emblem of danger and decadence.
This season, the feline spots prowled beyond their outerwear confines, slipping onto fluid skirt sets at Khaite, stretching over second-skin separates, and stalking across tailored suits that Saint Laurent, as ever, honed to a claw. At Roberto Cavalli, the print returned to its natural habitat, feral, unapologetic, alive. A reminder that even in a world obsessed with novelty, fashion still surrenders to its oldest instinct: the animal within.
If the pencil skirt was about fluid adaptation, its sibling, the skirt set, spoke in the language of control. For Fall 2025, the ensemble arrived charged with bold colour, architectural cuts, and fabrics that exuded quiet privilege.
The pièce de résistance: a made-to-order croc suede duo, part jacket, part miniskirt, at Louis Vuitton; a pleated midi at Marni; an abbreviated dress at Armani. This was not about practicality, but precision: tailoring distilled to its essence, where elegance and authority converged in one, impeccably measured line.
The cumulative effect of FW25 was one of polarity, fur versus lace, volume against transparency, softness cut with steel. And yet, the interplay was deliberate. Fashion, after all, has always thrived on contradiction. What became clear is that these are not mere seasonal flourishes, but reflections of a shifting cultural wardrobe: the need for protection, the longing for fragility, the insistence on strength.
In this tug-of-war between artifice and authenticity, FW25 proved that it is precisely in these tensions that modern fashion finds its voice.
