February is the shortest month of the year, but it is also jam-packed with holidays and events. For the fashion world, the month ushers a slew of models and global designers — from long-enduring fashion houses and up-and-coming ones — back to the runway stages of New York, London, Paris, and Milan to present their Fall/Winter 2025 collections. A famous quote from “The Phantom of the Opera” echoes the sentiments found in the latter half of the year’s simplistically extravagant and hottest ready-to-wear: “Our lives are one masked ball.” This year’s masquerade of fashion weeks sought to define this next chapter in the life of fashion with decadent ensembles built by layering texture upon texture, shape upon shape.
2024 ended with a shift back to the fashion trends of the 2010s. Once seen on top models like Giselle Bündchen and Beyoncé in her 2011 hit “Love on Top,” the Beckett wedge sneaker suddenly skyrocketed on wishlists and among fashion communities on TikTok and Depop, spelling the resurgence of Isabel Marant and Chloé’s effortless, messy boho look decked with gemstones, draped in suede, and stringed with fringe-galore. Despite many deeming the Marant and Chloé look to be “chronically online” and overdone, eyes were fixed on both brands’ next moves at this year’s Paris Fashion Week.
The Fall/Winter 2025 collections from both are elaborative upgrades to boho-chic, merging familiar beige palettes with icy biker-chic outfitting. The combination produces a higher sensibility that echoes the prime of Kate Moss and Slavic doll models, renovating past trends to the updated tastes of the aspirational and experimental modern women. Chloé blended dreamy silks in cream, teal, and sapphire with contrasting dramatic laces, impossibly low plunging necklines, and fur accessories. In comparison, Marant leaned into black and red plaid, elevating boyish patterns with bejeweled cameos of silver sequins and hanging brooches. Together, the two collections presented like counterparts, tied together by their use of rebellious black leather. A shared love of the shiny, rigid material — along with fur — neatly interlocked with many other collections as well.
What really stood out to me, however, were the collections that drew on simplistic contrasts, creating shock through shape and definition instead of ornate layering. While these fashion houses still aligned with the general theme of dark sultriness from Chloé and Marant, they swapped lightweight, slim fabrics for boxy, defined silhouettes of suits and tweed.
Yves Saint Laurent’s men’s collection integrated leather into clean-cut, retro suits, drawing heavily from photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s black-and-white art practice built on contrast, clean lines, and restraint. For YSL, the rebellious streak in leather suit pants added an air of shock and effortlessness while maintaining the house’s legacy built on foundational codes. Even in Schiaparelli’s curvaceous silhouettes, which greatly contrast YSL’s signature edgy straight lines, thicker materials served to enlarge the presence of models, granting them an impeccably empowering chutzpah through pieces that bravely stand alone in their complete non-reliance on jewelry.
The trends set at Paris Fashion Week were later followed by other prestigious brands at Milan Fashion Week. Maison Margiela models donned cyberpunk L’Incognito sunglasses, an uninterrupted straight black band covering their eyes as they marched down in streamline black suits. Pushing the narrative of enlargement, the Giorgio Armani show at Milan Fashion Week mirrored the appeal of Chloé’s fur charms but scaled them up into huge coats and scarves — building the material into pieces of unignorable metallic drama.
The piece that personally stood out the most, however, was a scarlet red jacket by Khaite presented at New York Fashion Week, a miraculously crafted piece that wrapped around the model’s neck and cascaded down around her complementary dress like a red calla lily. The jacket billowed down with no pockets in sight. To me, it looked as if Khaite creative director Catherine Holstein snatched the curtains of a regal palace and fixed it in place to be worn. The resulting piece is menacing in its depth — almost vampiric even — yet, also impossibly delicate in its composition. Although not wearable in the everyday, this jacket is emblematic of how garment construction in fashion is a harmonious blend between architecture and movement.
The shininess of leather and exuberance of fur breathed life into many shows throughout fashion month. From the runway to our closets, embracing experimental textures is a way to symbolically reinvent ourselves. The way we feel in our clothes influences how we interact with the world. Looking to past trends for inspiration and incorporating these styles into our own wardrobes offers a confidence boost and adds some necessary spice into our daily lives for the remainder of the year.
