Cannes show off what’s in fashion this year

Key Spring/Summer 2025 Fashion Trend: The top trends of the spring/summer 2025 collections speak not to politics, but to the idea of soft power – of using fashion to influence, beguile, charm, seduce and bewitch. The season as a whole felt uplifting, positive and women-friendly; the overall message being, as Nicole Phelps put it: “You don’t have to renounce your strength to be feminine.” Or, as Muhammad Ali so memorably said: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Fashion can take us places, and one of designers’ chosen destinations for spring was cloud nine.

This was a season in which air was the predominant element and ethereality abounded. Chiffons floated and jerseys swung in unison with the body – movement being another key theme. Cloud-like dresses were buoyed with stuffing at Comme des Garçons and Torishéju, or actually inflated at Anrealage; elsewhere, more traditional balloon skirts puffed out the picture. At the same time, autumn’s fascination with 2D flatness evolved to the point where many garments seemed to defy gravity, an aesthetic set in motion seasons ago by Glenn Martens’s use of wire at Y/Project, and Demna’s “windswept” couture look.

May 15, 2025 | 7:26 am