by Metropol | December 17, 2025 8:33 am
I t’s been penned the ‘year of musical chairs’ – 2025 has been hard to keep up with for those designing at luxury fashion houses. With more than 20 leading brands changing creative hands, some directorships lasting just one season (think Dario Vitale’s recent exit from Versace), we’ve seen a horde of shifting visions, short-lived trends, and major industry changes.
Even in New Zealand, the fashion stratosphere flipped. Under a collective governing board of industry experts, New Zealand Fashion Week introduced its ‘new look’ format, expanding to include Ōtautahi with the Christchurch Spring Fashion Festival. Mindful Fashion NZ called on the government to do better by our industry, which contributes $7.8 billion to the economy and provides 76,000 jobs, not to mention its impact on culture, creativity and community across the country. The successful parliament meeting progressed three major initiatives: a 2026 Threads of Tomorrow Summit, Industry Manufacturing Strategy, and Future of Fibre Aotearoa.
While some bricks-and-mortar stores thrived, others struggled to survive – online retailing giants and Donald Trump’s tariffs threatened the fabric of fashion consumerism. A lot happened, so which moments and themes emerged to define 2025, sartorially-speaking?
NOSTALGIA & VINTAGE FINDS: Globally, fashion took a walk down memory lane in 2025. In New Zealand, fashion week street style became a sea of pre-loved and thrifted finds from garment to accessory. A nod to the anti-fast fashion movement, if you will. Local second-hand stores such as Nifty and To Be Continued champion the sustainable movement.
POP CULTURE: Rapper Kendrick Lamar wore flared Celine jeans to the Super Bowl and then they sold out – fast. Newly-appointed American Vogue Head of Editorial Content Chloe Malle’s controversial approach transforms the monthly cadence into specific issues timed and anchored by cultural moments, starting 2026. (“We want our shoots and cover stories to live in a place that feels substantial and that people want to keep,” Chloe says.) Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo unearthed a pink and green trend promoting the film Wicked: For Good, and one thing became clear in 2025: fashion is more and more dictated by celebrities and pop culture moments than industry professionals.
EXPRESSIVE COLOUR: While bold colour framed fashion worldwide, what made it back to Canterbury was an individualistic way of applying the rainbow to everyday dressing. Between vibrant hues and moody neutrals, pops of colour in accessories to colour blocking and experimental print layering (and many, many polka dots), the fashion landscape leaned into that which felt personal without straying too far from global feeling.
Source URL: https://metropol.co.nz/what-defined-fashion-in-2025/
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