Luxury Fashion Looks Like Luxury Fashion Again. Is That a Good Thing?
Fashion's old guard finally got their wish. Not so long ago, the industry's stodgiest authorities were grousing about the streetwearification of luxury (or maybe it was the luxurification of streetwear — who's to say!). But now, streetwear and luxury are again drifting apart.
As different as the Spring/Summer 2025 fashion shows have all been, there's one consistent throughline: Luxury looks like luxury again.
Yes, luxury fashion once again is informed by that expensive, no-logo (or barely-logo'd) look, eschewing dramatic proportions or statement branding for something more bluntly sumptuous.
But is that for the better?
Today's luxury look first took shape in the best parts of 2023's fashion weeks, which included more muted presentations and indulgently saucy looks. They're hardly strange bedfellows because This was the formula that set the standard of elegance in the '90s.
Clearly, the short-lived quiet luxury boom wasn't so short-lived after all, though these disparate threads weren't knitted together until this most recent round of shows.
So, here we are, contemplating Spring/Summer 2025 and wondering just where in the heck all that luxury streetwear stuff went.
You expect (and get) this sort of no-nonsense suavacity from labels like Bottega Veneta, Loro Piana, and Prada. But Burberry? Marni? Moschino? Diesel?
This shift was at least partially forecasted by some of the young creative directors, who tend toward professionalism.
But who could've seen typically cheeky Sunnei offering collarless vests, knitted T-shirts, and very Phoebe Philo-style shirt-dresses for SS25, all styled on a cast of mature models?
What about JW Anderson serving a fancy affair so structured it could've functioned as a walking art show?
And, though fun-loving Versace leaned hard into its signature statement shirts, the resulting looks were as modestly debonair as anything from Giorgio Armani or po-faced Hedi Slimane.
Simone Rocha, she of the exquisitely outrageous silhouette, presented patient and pure elegance. In New York, Luar's party vibe was reigned-in for single-tone looks emphatic on texture. Even cheetah prints were subdued, smudged into a near-abstract pattern.
Luxury is in the air, everywhere.
To be clear, by "luxury," I mean that clothes look expensive in the ways that expensive clothes always look: Crisp lines, real-world styling, approachable silhouettes, and simple separates more timeless than timely. Oh, and dark sunglasses. Lots of those.
This is not the logomania of yesteryear nor the quasi-street luxury of, well, not quite yesteryear (compare heyday-era Balenciaga to today's muted Balenciaga).
There's now no athleisure, no hoodies, hardly any luxury sneakers, for better or worse.
You get the sense that there's something larger at play.
Like, ultra-urbane Haider Ackermann is now at Tom Ford, the original Very Clearly A Luxury Label. And Alexander McQueen's Capital-F Fashion maestro Sarah Burton is now at Givenchy.
A luxury sea change is under way, good news for people who like their expensive clothes to look dapper and dandy.
But what about the kids who finally found luxury leaning their way back in the Virgil Abloh Louis Vuitton days? Those who began caring about luxury labels when they saw Gucci Mane as a Gucci model (or Billie Eilish or Macaulay Culkin or...)? Just look at the Gucci Cruise 2020 campaign — it's all smiles and fun, a party everyone is invited to.
Sure, Pharrell's Louis Vuitton has that street DNA but it's also out-and-out luxury with a dedicated "Millionaire" product line. No LV skate shoes here.
And Sebato de Sarno's Gucci is undeniably slick but it lacks Alessandro Michele's evocative romanticism, which was as fixated on ideas as on clothes.
Luxury's streetwear fixation made the market more accessible to young people. More shoppers see themselves in a hoodie than a blazer. In reestablishing its more austere codes, luxury risks (or intentionally invites) closing itself off from a wider consumer base.
The clothes all look good, to be clear. But do they have a soul?
Perhaps it's simply a sign of the times.
2024 is a global election season, for one, which innately invites downsides like market uncertainty in blue-chip spheres like art and finance. Fashion's largest conglomerates are similarly forecasting gloomy revenues for the year, casting an anxious pall over the entire industry.
When times are shaky, you cling to familiarity. So, perhaps luxury's return to form is a form of battening the hatches.
No one knows what's coming next but it's a pretty safe bet that, whatever happens, luxury's wealthy clientele will still want to look wealthy.
