This summer, flip flops made an inescapable return, scarves drifted from women’s necks to their heads and waists, and Pucci dresses featured prominently across Instagram feeds.
But where summer 2024 had Brat (an aesthetic — and vibe — with ample touchpoints for fashion to latch onto), and 2023 was dominated by Barbiecore alongside a revolving door of TikTok-fuelled micro trends, summer 2025 was strangely bare on the trend front. With Rhode, Hailey Bieber is pushing ‘lemontini’ yellow, but no other brand has meaningfully hopped on. There’s been lots of talk about toes amid the flip flop resurgence, but that’s a far cry from an overarching trend — nobody’s claiming it’s a ‘summer of toes’. (Though The New York Times’s style section did announce that it’s a “Great Time to be a Toe”.)
“[There’s] nothing resembling a key look or vibe, just a scattering of more random micro-trends that happened to stick,” says Emily Gordon-Smith, content director at trends intelligence business Stylus.
It’s part of a larger void. There was no song of the summer: while last year’s ‘pop girl summer’ produced hit after hit, this summer’s pop culture moments felt more niche, less tightly produced and increasingly nostalgic. There wasn’t a drink of the summer, or a destination of the summer. “Last year’s ‘Euro summer’ or ‘Euro girl summer’ has become tragically uncool,” says Beth Bentley, founder of brand strategy consultancy Tomorrowism.
The colour of the summer, according to retail intelligence firm EDITED, is butter yellow, with email mentions of the colour up 727 per cent year-on-year. But this hue lacks any strong cultural grounding or resonance, unlike its predecessors, Barbie pink and Brat green, says senior retail analyst Venetia Rothwell. “Instead, the [butter yellow] shade has gained prominence thanks to its softness and versatility, quickly becoming a new neutral and a core shade within consumer wardrobes.” That this summer’s shade is a neutral — after previous years’ splashy pink and acid green — is a sign of the times. Plus, the colour was making headlines long before the warmer months set in, so much so that Bieber declared butter yellow “played out” back in July when launching Rhode’s Lemontini products.
Underlying a summer of ‘blah’ is the political and economic environment, says Nikita Walia, strategy director at brand and venture studio Unnamed. “The overarching trend this summer was political and economic,” she says. “Rising conservatism, global instability and economic uncertainty are the dominant signals shaping culture. Aesthetics are responses to that environment.”
There were signs of this aesthetic fragmentation earlier in the year on the fashion side. Nick Tran, head of buying and merchandising at Dover Street Market Paris, said that at his pre-fall market appointments at the beginning 2025, the fashion was “all kind of jumbled”. Last summer, despite Brat’s hedonistic dominance, micro-trends were already on the decline, in favour of a more individualistic approach to dressing. After the algorithmic whiplash of 2024, 2025 was set for their (continued) decline, and the rise of the vibe: not just an aesthetic, but a cultural mood with touchpoints that traverse on and offline worlds. But as summer comes to a close, we’re left wondering: what — and where — was the vibe?
Fragmentation floods
A number of trending items from this summer signalled the disjuncture of 2025, rather than a cohesive cultural moment. Polka dots, capris, bandanas, fish, flip flops, Pucci, scarves around the waist — the list goes on. Summer is always a moment for brands and media to push fleeting trends, but this year, it mostly amounted to noise.
“The sheer volume and pace of information flooding our feeds means that it’s hard for any one thing to dominate in a meaningful way,” Gordon-Smith says. Bentley agrees, arguing that perhaps we are just too fragmented for any one overarching summer trend to prevail. “Some of us are having a Jet2holiday summer, others a The Summer I Turned Pretty summer, maybe even a West Village girl summer,” she says.
A lack of overarching mood for the season makes it tough for brands to market, Gordon-Smith adds. But amid a riskier marketing environment with no obvious trends for brands to hang their hats on, those that recognise the appetite for less trend-driven fashion and content could see success. “For brands that have identified consumer appetite for a more timeless fashion backdrop onto which they can pin personally resonant pieces, it’s potentially an exciting time,” she says.
Tough times
Brands need to be intentional about how they navigate trendless waters. As consumers pull back their spend, it’s harder for a trend to gain traction and resonance via consumers buying into it. Shoppers are wary of quality and want items that last (also inconsistent with the logic of buying into a trend), meaning they’re less likely to fall prey to quick, trend-based marketing.
“This summer, the state of the economy means a lot of people likely don’t have the disposable income to justify buying into the trend of the moment,” Bentley says, “and the state of the political climate means others likely don’t have the headspace.”
It also reflects the shift to conservatism experts have been anticipating. As those struggling to reconcile the current political moment have been more preoccupied with the chaos than their clothes, overarching aesthetics for the year have continued to progress rightward. “The lack of seasonal vibe frippery and the dominance of really quite conservative looks such as preppy sports, trad wife aesthetics, the return of tailoring and quiet luxury, in a superficial way, mirror how we’re seeing politics shift to the right,” Gordon-Smith says.
Walia traces this shift back well before the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. “Trends in the sociological sense unfold over years,” she says. “If you map 2016 to 2024, you see how optimism at the end of the Obama era gave way to a slow drift into conservatism. That did not happen in a single season. It took nearly a decade for the cultural temperature to turn.”
Nostalgia rules
This conservative shift is wrapped up in nostalgia, as fashion futurist Geraldine Wharry told Vogue Business regarding the move to conservative fashion and beauty ideals. “There are parallels in this idea of going back to this perceived glory of what America was [in the past],” she said. The resulting cultural landscape is thus, in part, the product of this nostalgia, too.
Other consumers aren’t looking this far back — instead harkening back to the hairdyed, ultra-filtered, Wild West socials days of the mid-2010s. Life was easier back then, we think, forgetting that Tumblr was rife with harmful content and that the beginning of the decade was still mired by the impact of the financial crisis.
“The only thing the chronically online seem to agree on this summer is that life was probably better in the past,” Bentley says. “Nostalgia and ennui rule — from Kylie [Jenner] going viral playing with some old lip kits she found in a drawer, to the return of messy Insta carousels and long-forgotten mid-2010s filters.” Now, it’s about recycling and remixing past aesthetics that still carry meaning, Walia adds.
This desire for the past is something brands are leaning into. Topshop, for one, is banking on nostalgia to fuel its reboot. “The community is desperate to have Topshop and Topman back,” managing director Michelle Wilson told Vogue Business ahead of its Trafalgar Square comeback show. A brand’s return can indeed connect with consumers because of this affinity. “Nostalgia offers familiarity and legibility when the future feels unstable,” Walia says.
But is nostalgia really enough? For every magazine celebrating the return of the brand’s Joni and Jamie jeans, there are consumers questioning whether it’s just a repackaged version of the same polyester-laden Topshop of our youth. When you peel back the layers, this nostalgia may not be as desirable as it may seem.
Instead of copy-pasting, brands should look to how this desire for ‘better times’ can translate into an offering of something truly better and lasting. As it stands, experts are questioning the current wave of nostalgia’s staying power. “The nostalgia epidemic is similarly relentless, becoming more nuanced and micro in its references all the time,” Gordon-Smith says. “We think we’re going to see this plateau. The newest vibe is more about historical references indicating a knowing, intellectual quality.”
This goes back to consumers’ desires for quality, smart clothes. Instead of reverting to the aesthetic of a specific, over-simplified period, brands can — and should — lean into timelessness. Clothes that are well tailored; garments with pockets; pieces that reference history while still looking forward.
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