Fall 2025 Trends: Beyond the Front Row, Back to the Show
Anrealage developed in collaboration with heritage manufacturer Shikibo
Luxury fashion today teeters between spectacle and soul. Once a realm of artistic experimentation, it now often feels reduced to celebrity optics who sits front row, not what walks the runway. The absence of visionary creative directors like John Galliano at Dior has left Haute Couture less theatrical, more transactional. And while Fall 2025 haven’t fully restored fashion’s dreamscape, they offered glimmers of creativity moments that remind us fashion can still hold people in a dream.
The front row, once reserved for editors, muses, and patrons of the craft, has become a stage for celebrity culture. The Kardashian-Jenner presence strategically placed, heavily photographed often overshadows the collections themselves. Their attendance guarantees viral coverage, but rarely elevates the conversation around design. It’s a shift that risks turning fashion into entertainment, rather than art. And yet, despite the noise, some designers are pushing back with vision and conviction.
Sarah Burton’s appointment at Givenchy reignited emotional storytelling. Her oversized mixed-stone top, worn by Jenna Ortega at the 77th Emmy Awards, was a cinematic showpiece delivered in a coffin-shaped box and inspired by Death Becomes Her. It wasn’t just red carpet it was costume, narrative, and couture colliding. Burton’s ability to blend archival elegance with surreal modernity brought back a sense of drama to the house.
At Alexander McQueen, Sean McGirr’s Fall 2025 collection unfolded like a nocturnal walk through Victorian London. Inspired by Charles Dickens’s Night Walks, McGirr conjured flâneurs in razor-sharp tailoring, angel-wing shearling, and Wildean palettes. His silhouettes blurred gender and genre, with gold bullion embroidery adorning both bomber jackets and sweeping capes. A graduate of Central Saint Martins under the late Louise Wilson, McGirr wasn’t rushing to prove himself. As Jonathan Anderson said during his Dior Menswear debut, “A creative director cannot prove himself in a first season.” McGirr’s poetic conviction suggests he’s building something enduring.
Anderson’s own debut at Dior SS26 menswear was cerebral and cinematic. Inspired by Baudelaire, Basquiat, and aristocratic eccentricity, the show fused tailoring with surrealist gestures embroidered waistcoats, silken cravats, and ceramic eggs as show invites. The livestream turned backstage intimacy into public theatre. With his women’s and couture collections set to debut in Paris, anticipation builds around how he’ll challenge Dior’s legacy with intellect and unexpected beauty.
Marc Jacobs remains one of fashion’s most unpredictable voices. His Fall 2025 collection was a surrealist study in exaggerated silhouettes cargo pants with head-sized pockets, lace gowns with leg-of-mutton sleeves, and bows that bordered on sculpture. It was impractical, theatrical, and deeply emotional. Jacobs’s obsession with proportion mirrored in his own extra-long nails feels like a personal manifesto. Sofia Coppola’s documentary Marc by Sofia, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, offers an intimate portrait of his creative psyche.
Marc Jacobs
The collection was once again unveiled at the New York Public Library, where Jacobs conjured a dreamlike vision of Victorian beauty.
Hodakova’s Fall 2025 collection was a symphony of constraint and liberation. A tambourine reimagined as a skirt, a double bass converted into a dress, and strings woven into cage-like frocks turned garments into musical metaphors. The belt-laden skirt invited DIY reinterpretation, sparking creativity among young fashion enthusiasts. It was poetic, punk, and tactile fashion that sings.
At Fiorucci, Francesca Murri’s polaroid-sleeved dress blurred nostalgia and Instagram. Encasing everyday moments in plastic, the garment became a wearable scrapbook a surreal postcard of memory and modernity. It felt like scrolling through your own life, stitched into fabric.
Kunihiko Morinaga’s LED-infused collection for Anrealage turned clothing into living billboards. Patterns shifted every second—check to stripe to cosmos powered by thousands of RGB LEDs. Rather than advertising slogans, the garments displayed dynamic visuals, transforming fashion into interface and avatar. Morinaga’s vision proposes a future where garments are mutable, expressive, and alive.
Fiorucci
Turns fleeting memories into a wearable archive of emotion and nostalgia.
Junya Watanabe’s Fall 2025 was a geometric rebellion. Biker jackets became triangular capes, velvet dresses bore square necklines like tea trays, and trench coats morphed into architectural sculptures. It was punk meets cubism, with Hendrix as the soundtrack. His cubist lens transforms familiar garments into wearable art, proving that futurism can still thrill.
Fall 2025 may not have fully restored fashion’s emotional grandeur, but it offered glimpses of what still makes this industry magical. In a time when celebrity seating threatens to eclipse the runway, these designers reminded us that creativity when pursued with conviction can still cut through the noise.
