These 12 seems seize A/W 2025’s defining tendencies

Themes of glamour, hazard and seduction ran by way of the A/W 2025 collections – from Saint Laurent’s thigh-high leather-based boots to ‘fur’ coats, animal prints and sculpted tailoring. As seen within the September 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands now), we seize the season’s sensual new temper in 12 objects and appears for women and men.

Power trip (top left)

Tropes of glamour – from bullet bras and brooches to red lips and fur coats – were riffed on by designers in unexpected and imaginative ways. At Alaïa, towering shearling ‘fur’ coats looped around models’ necklines and tassels jutted from skirt waistlines, while vast corsages sat flush to the neck. ‘The message is about singularity, individuality, the eternal strength and resilience of women, empowering them through their clothes,’ said creative director Pieter Mulier. ‘That inspired Azzedine, and it always inspires me – the strength of beauty.’

Thigh high (top right)

An imagined meeting between Robert Mapplethorpe and Yves Saint Laurent sparked Anthony Vaccarello’s menswear collection for Saint Laurent. Clashing the carnal desires of Mapplethorpe’s photography with the ‘bookish’ classicism of Yves Saint Laurent’s Parisian uniform, it was defined by thigh-grazing leather boots worn with 1980s-inspired tailoring. Referencing a ‘Robin Hood’ boot created by Yves Saint Laurent in 1963, they were perhaps the season’s most talked-about accessory, finding fans in Alexander Skarsgård and Pedro Pascal.

Buffer zone

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

The proliferation of fake fur – or fur reproductions in cleverly manipulated feathers or dyed shearling – instructed a need for defense, whether or not towards the weather or one thing extra existential. Enveloping ‘yeti’ coats had been most interesting of their hefty weight and measurement, from these at Dolce & Gabbana – evoking the thrown-on fashion of off-duty fashions – to Sportmax’s shaggy monochromatic overcoats. ‘Hyper-reinvention – where the ordinary becomes extraordinary,’ stated the Italian label of the gathering.

Swan song

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

After a five-year tenure, Kim Jones held his closing act as creative director of Dior menswear amid a dramatic monochromatic mişe-en-scene that noticed fashions descend an infinite optic white staircase and onto the runway – a play on the staircase on the home’s Avenue Montaigne handle. Silhouettes took inspiration from the streamlined proportions of Christian Dior’s 1954 H-Line couture assortment, whereas ribbon-like eye masks had been tied on the again with a bow, evoking these discovered on the bottles of the Miss Dior perfume.

Magic eye

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

Awaiting the arrival of incoming artistic director Matthieu Blazy, Chanel has used latest collections to strengthen its most distinctive codes. For A/W 2025, it did so by way of a group designed to ‘alter perceptions’, reimagining Chanel emblems utilizing tips of the attention – whether or not trompe l’oeil bows or a sequence of surreal equipment blown up in measurement or shrunk into miniature. These included an enormous model of its signature pochette, a tiny quilted purse, and this Borrowers-style string of pearls, one in all which flips open to make a bag.

Dark arts

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

‘A menacing elegance’ is how Anthony Vaccarello outlined the temper of his menswear assortment for Saint Laurent, with its sense of hazard, inflected with hints of kink. There was additionally Prada’s patchworked leather-based tailoring and uncooked slices of shearling ‘fur’; Lemaire’s leather-based foulards, worn as headscarves; and elongated trench coats and leather-based gloves at Ferragamo. The latter was offered by Maximilian Davis on a darkened runway strewn with pink roses, a nod to the sensual staging of Pina Bausch’s Nelken, carried out by the Tanztheater Wuppertal.

Wild ones

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

Designers embraced a wilder facet this season, with Duran Lantink’s assortment sporting a heady collage of zebra, leopard and tiger prints, some painted instantly on to the fashions’ our bodies, whereas Peter Copping’s Lanvin debut – an ode to the louche Nineteen Twenties eveningwear of founder Jeanne Lanvin – featured outsized leopard-print coats with a tender, shaggy end. At Sacai, Chitose Abe regarded in direction of extra fantastical realms, conjuring up the monsters of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are with brightly colored prospers of dyed shearling.

Hat trick

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

The hat is having one thing of a renaissance, showing in numerous guises on latest runways. Signalling a transfer past the informal spirit of a cap or beanie, designers as an alternative delighted within the nostalgic class of extra basic millinery. At Sportmax, it was one thing between a pillbox and a panama, at Duran Lantink, there have been amped-up variations of the trapper and woolly hats in his signature sculpted kind, whereas Loro Piana featured a play on the cloche hat, a mode synonymous with the liberatory gown codes of the Nineteen Twenties.

Pump action

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

The pointed, heeled pump has been an archetype of femininity since its rise to prominence within the Nineteen Thirties, a second that coincided with the rising affect of Hollywood. Interpretations of the pump appeared all through the collections, although it was these at Prada that proved most intriguing, that includes raw-cut edges as a riposte to perfection. Co-creative administrators Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons famous it was a part of an interrogation of femininity. ‘We asked ourselves, what is feminine beauty?’ stated Mrs Prada. ‘It is a constant questioning.’

Carry all

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

This was the season of the XXL bag, good for transporting the requirements of up to date life. Hermès supplied up a brand new tackle its ‘Haut à Courroies’ bag, which, in its roominess, can double as a weekend bag or aircraft carry-on. Stripped of the same old {hardware}, the varied straps and clasps had been changed with ghostly embossing, as if a hint of what was there had been left behind. It got here as a part of a group that creative director Véronique Nichanian described as ‘a play between front and back, inside and out, visible and invisible’.

Body work

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

Stella McCartney staged her present on the ‘Stellacorp’ HQ – a surreal simulacrum of an workplace, full with spinning chairs and desks, which was ultimately invaded by underwear-clad pole dancers. Titled ‘Laptop to Lapdance’, playful juxtapositions ran by way of the gathering, which noticed the company uniform, from pencil skirts to blouses, shot by way of with a frisson of perversity. Collections from Acne Studios, Balenciaga and All-In offered comparable riffs on workplace apparel, the latter impressed by Mike Nichols’ 1988 film Working Girl.

Take shape

(Image credit score: Photography by Antoine and Charlie, trend by Jason Hughes)

Men’s tailoring this season was sculpted in silhouette, with a deal with the waist. Kim Jones’ last assortment for Dior Men included a tuxedo-style riff on Christian Dior’s Bar jacket, whereas at Wooyoungmi, a reconsideration of eveningwear noticed a carved waistline on a jacket adorned with 3D-appliqué flowers. Madame Woo, who staged the present within the opulent surrounds of Karl Lagerfeld’s former residence on Rue de l’Université, stated she was serious about ‘ideas of proper dressing’, reimagining formalwear in louche and sensual fashion.

Models: Hollie-May Saker at Models 1, Tristan Watkins at Menace Models. Casting: Dean Goodman. Hair: Anna Chapman at Julian Watson utilizing Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Kirstin Piggott at Julian Watson utilizing Charlotte Tilbury. Manicure: Hayley Evans-Smith at Saint Luke utilizing Byredo. Interiors: Olly Mason. Digi tech: Laura Heckford. Photography assistants: Tom Porter, Ed Philips. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor. Interiors coordinator: Archie Thomson. Production: Victoria Watkins at Birdhouse. Production assistant: Melina Grace Bryant. Retouching: Aly Studio.

A model of this story seems within the September 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, out there in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today