2025 IN FASHION

Favorite Shows Favorite Clothes

Well, that’s another year. Thank you so much for reading, subscribing, buying a zine, or opening these emails. Very excited for all that the new year will bring.

Below are some of my favorite shows and clothes in no particular order.

FASHION SHOWS

Ponte FW25

Harry Pontefract’s Ponte FW25 show had the refreshing effect of feeling like nothing else in fashion, or perhaps, impressively having it all. Upon first glance it looks like an art piece - high concept dresses composed of 10 sheep, an inflated balloon snaking around a torso, grapes(?), a dress of tulle so sheer it looks like nothing at all. Then there’s the simple stuff - a pair of denim with impossible knife pleats, a blazer with a collar exploding in wool, a tank top with straps hovering above the shoulders. All of it is approached with such ease, simplicity, and obviousness.

It’s impossible to see this show and not see a bit of Margiela, particularly in the frizzy blonde hair, and shlumpy denim sets. To be fair, everyone copies Margiela, but what’s refreshing is Pontefract’s focus on materiality, on true vintage and upcycing as a central rhetorical and affective power, and on ensuring his garments are as wearable as they are expressive. Still, Ponte executes in a totally individual language of glamour and deconstruction.

Martine Rose FW25

I’ve been making these lists long enough to know that they basically involve choosing whichever Martine Rose show hit me harder and waxing poetic about that. Well, this year it was FW25 - a return to Rose’s exceptional lookbooks and digital runways. In the period since her last lookbook show (3 years, 5 seasons) Rose has begun presenting womenswear, larger accessories lines, and a dedicated Nike partnership. The result is a mixture of runway exuberance mingling with Rose’s fare of tweaked, bold staples.

Maybe it’s the pixelated fuzz of the camera, the casting, the styling, but Rose’s leather jackets seem especially sumptuous, the underwear options particularly bizarre. An ode to “uncharted sexuality“ by way of prop noses and outerwear embedded with bum bags. It’s no great deviation from Rose’s signatures, but a continued honing of what makes her work so unusually potent.

Valentino Spring 2025 Couture “VERTIGENEUX“

One of this generation’s most talented designers, Alessandro Michele, designed and showed a couture collection for the first time. It exaggerated each critic’s least favorite Michele hallmarks: book-length show notes citing semiotics and philosophy, baroque costumes, lust, embellishment, and a heavily grating set piece.

Months down the line Valentino is in crisis. Customers are scarce, and this Michelle’s work is being grafted onto quiet luxury lookbooks and defiled by AI ads. Perhaps the lord of logo has bad enough taste to endorse these decisions but I hope this isn’t so. Instead I remember the opulence of neon hitting a mustard ballgown, a Foucault quote reflected on bare cleavage, and the feeling that a category of fashion was actually experiencing something almost new.

I write more about the show here

August Barron FW25 “Downtown Girl“

One of the great modern fashion lookbooks. “Downtown Girl“ was conceived as a sequel to SS25, a bridge between high concept/high price art-fashion and “wearable“ commercialization. It hits that in-between perfectly, layering its layered 2-D tops and skirts with cheeky subversion. FW25 seemed particularly keen on the styling tricks and standouts Miu Miu employs, from ballet flats, cargo details, stodgy jewelry, and colorful sweaters (both August Barron and Miu Miu are styled by Lotta Volkova.) Whereas Miu Miu sees the staples of its uniform as basic branding exercises, August Barron inflates and doubles, abstracting its feminine tropes with anarchic flair.

Xander Zhou SS26 “Fragmented Formality“

What boggles my mind about Xander Zhou is that while his presentations are as high concept & costume art as the next well funded provocateur, each show presents a wealth of wearable, incredible fashion items. None ever seem to be available. After an AI laced ode to a reality addled by tech, SS26 sought to reproduce glitch effects in physical tailoring. Everything from hats to suits seemed to quadruple and fly off the bodies of models, with both classic formalwear codes and Zhou’s signature bandoliers and masks ripe for warping. No one knows how to provoke like Zhou, and luckily there is clear craft behind the needling. It’s also Zhou’s shortest show in years, and you can see how much

Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen FW25 “i’m in love with everything and i know nothing at all“

As I mentioned last year, I could not be more biased about Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen’s work. It was my experience working on her SS25 show that made me realize there was a place for me in fashion in New York. Her work is by nature sustainable & non industrialized, warm, elegant, and affectively charged the way much self-proclaimed sustainable fashion is not. This season expands on Whalen’s flowing shapes and Victoriana, with perfectly cinched bloomers, sumptuous shirt dresses, and rusty dyes. It is these dyes, as well as Whalen’s completely black ensembles that add an intensity to her found & worn fabrics. While this season is described as an extension of “hopelessness,“ it showed me garments, shapes, drapes, and styling in a way I can only describe as euphoric, as so identifiably right. When I use the word bias before writing about Whalen’s work, it is as much because of this punctum so central to my relationship with her work.

Undercover FW25 Women’s BUT BEAUTIFUL IV

The kind of softball nostalgia I don’t usually fall for, but the pieces from Jun Takahashi’s 35th anniversary in fashion captured the craft and scale of its main reference, his 2004 show But Beautiful. The largest feathered showpieces to minute embroidered captured Takahashi’s punk craftiness, even the tee shirts had an artisanal oddity to them. What made the show definitively more than nostalgic folly was Takahashi building on his But Beautiful motifs, fusing them with his modern philosophies on women’s basics. The result is even the cash grabs - the Champion collaborations, the Vans with monsters on them, all walk the tightrope of high concept punk nerdiness and lived-in elegance.

Margiela Artisanal 2026

Perhaps the only new creative director show that exceeded its hype. I am a terribly annoying Margiela purist (I don’t even like spelling G*lliano’s name) and not enough of a Y/project truther to get really excited about new creative director Glenn Martens. Reservations aside, has there been a more respectful and Margiela focussed Margiela show since Matthieu Blazy & the studio team? Martens steered the theatrics of previous years into the territories of Margiela’s actual philosophies while retaining Martens’ own heritage, memory, and modernity. The result was a populist Fashion Moment, a breath of relief for the haters, and a masterclass in couture exuberance.

Willy Chavarria SS26 HURON

If this year was a celebration of 80s glamour & pastels, Willy Chavarria did it best (with Saint Laurent & Vitale’s Versace as competitors, no small feat.) Much of the show was superseded by Chavarria’s controversial demonstration against ICE, a noble pursuit that puzzled and angered some who pointed to Chavarria’s unrelated and show dedicated mostly to commercial glamour. Truth be told, I found that glamour to be more than enough - from the titled wide brimmed hats, the turquoise, the buttery patent leathers, and the continuously exceptional styling. Chavarria has been deeply successful at selling a universe of luxury that feels uniquely uncompromising. Each way that it grows feels exceedingly natural and deliriously simple. May Chavarria never debase himself with a dead house that would fail him, Chavarria’s own world is rich enough to cement him as the next Rick Owens or Thom Browne.

Melitta Baumeister FW25

The great shapes and outlandish silhouettes that Melitta Baumeister is infamous for are usually composed of stretchy dresses or analogously puckered sets. For FW25, Baumeister outdid herself in crafting elegant accessories, angular yet wearable outerwear, and versatile basics - in other words, amore versatile collection ripe for styling. This isn’t to discount Baumeister’s classic fare of synthetically stiff monochrome dresses and sweatsuits, rendered this season in golds and mustards, heather grays, and swampy greens.

HONORABLE MENTION

Hodakova SS26 - Like with Melitta baumeister’s FW25, this season boils down Hodakova’s wackier, more sculptural ideas into tangible, sensational styling. One of her best.

Walter Van Beirendonck SS26 - Each Beirendonck show seems more challengingly styled than the last. It’s about time Walter explored the 60s.

John Alexander Skelton FW25 - Just perfect. If you need someone to get you to obsess over perfect coats in perfect patterns, Skelton’s your man.

IM MENS SS26 - Issey Miyake’s new menswear line introduced in FW25 expands with more great outerwear, fabulous colors, and exceptional layering.

Tolu Coker FW25 - One of the most talented world builders in fashion currently, Coker’s skill is creating work that is, while deeply specific, universally desirable. I write more about it here.

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MY FAVORITE GARMENTS

But obviously, don’t buy anything (unless it’s upcycled or deadstock or somehow carbon negative)

Hodakova SS25 baracuta jacket

In the final days of my retail job I narrativized this jacket as a sliver of hope in fashion, or perhaps luxury in general. Think of a Chanel tweed jacket, the ornate five figure dead horse of luxury fashion, and then think of this. A fraction of the price, composed of vintage pants meaning each jacket is unique to the pair of pants. If luxury is to exist in the next 5-10 years, it must be spun from the veneration of trash. Hodakova is one of the most talented at doing this, and this jacket cuts through her most inaccessibly sculptural works to present an ethical, bizarre minimalism.

Martine Rose FW25 bumbag jackets X Junya Watanabe & Filson FW25 long pocket coat

I am a sucker for pockets, and jackets, meaning I am the ideal customer for Martine Rose’s Bumbag jackets, each with articulated pockets and a techwear mesh. The result is bombers, dusters, and leather bulked at the chest and elbows with glorious pockets - as functional as they are sexy. Another thing I am a sucker for is Junya Watanabe’s SS18 menswear. SS26, particularly this Filson coat takes a similar approach to Rose, here inserting pockets amid a contrast panel of blue Filson check (an homage to SS18’s much desired Carhartt & Pirelli coats of a similar look.)

Junya Watanabe SS25 Denim Wrap Jeans -

Simple, strange, euphoric denim. I write about the piece in depth in here.

Undercover FW25 denim

I have been patiently waiting for Jun Takahashi to reference, let alone mention his SS09 Patti Smith Neoboy Poem denim, a pair I partly devoted a college thesis to. To commemorate 30 years of business Takahashi updated the codes of one of his most famous collections, FW04’s But Beautiful, while including pieces that referenced other hits from his archive. These two pairs of denim combine the embroidered poetry style/lightning bolt embroidery of the Neoboy pair, along with the woven distressed knee repairs of SS03, with the tassels from his ”ethnic” motifs. The result is hodgepodge, but it works - elevating classic uniform to pop culture tizzy.

Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus x Kids Love Ghaite Shoes

A thick soled military boot has a heel that sticks up in a cartoonish right angle. A bulb toed shoe splits midway through into an identical bulb pointed out from the body like a conjoined twin. Another pair features a bulb grafted on top of another, a shoe stacked on a shoe. As purportedly well crafted and fashionable as these collaborations are, make more mistake. These are shoes that look like Looney Tunes injuries, wearable slapstick opulence. They are deservedly viral, yet no fit pic or digital image can capture their largesse.

Wales Bonner FW25 ‘Sierra‘ panel denim

An uncomplicated platonic ideal carpenter denim. This pair captures Wales Bonner’s effortlessness in crafting garments that would seem as natural with a tuxedo as they would with a hoodie.

Dries Van Noten SS25 snake effect sequin coat

Julian Klausner has big shoes to fill. This coat could charm, dazzle, bowl over anyone. It is museum bound - a sumptuousness that feels almost offensive. It’s a simple concept, a snakeskin coat except with a pattern composed of (you guessed it) sequins. Why? Why not.

Simone Rocha FW25 furs

There is a rare joy in fashion that still manages to scandalize. There is so much manufactured offensiveness and weak enfant-terrible posturing, true disgust is hard to come by. One would never expect horror from Simone Rocha, queen of lace, bows, and pearls, yet the introduction of faux fur stoles resembling stuffed bunny rabbits, and cartoon-taxidermy of her rabbit clutches was deeply disturbing to all who witnessed them (in person at least.) They are more deliciously macabre and strangely elegant than other attempts at bunny rabbit luxury, let alone faux fur.

Thom Browne SS25 goose coat

Whenever I’d talk to people tired of Thom Browne, the fact that he never produces his most interesting runway pieces, his logoism, or his sizing, I invariably bring up this coat. It is as simple as Browne’s most muted basics and as extravagant as his runway gowns. Rarer still, it is one of the few ready to wear items by Browne with a sense of humor. A sharp cashmere mid century inflected coat is Browne’s canvas for a large goose, embroidered in luminous gold thread. What else manages to be as stupid as it is elegant?

Noir Kei Ninomiya SS25 Reebok Instapumps

There is something endearing about the chunky futurism of vintage Reebok shapes, and it’s a shame that corporate footwear machinations make collaborative spins on them few and far between. Key Ninomiya designed a sensational art-shoe, bold, platformed, cute, insane, and… functional?

HONORABLE MENTION

Graphic skirts at Vaquera & Women’s History Museum - graphic tees and hoodies are done, we have entered the era of the graphic skirt

Telfar x Timberland Mid Pull On Boot - The only thing on this list that almost made me spend money on something at retail price

Rick Owens FW25 Cropped Scarf Flight Jacket - What more could you ask of a jacket?

Orslow ‘wolsro’ SS25 Backward Wide Fit Painter Pants - I love well made backwards things

The heeled shoes at Willy Chavarria & Luar - Both so sexy & so simple.

GREAT GARMENTS I BOUGHT

A 1990s Comme des Garçons Homme blazer for less than $30

A Martine Rose SS23 Stretch Denim Shirt dream come true

A Martine Rose Rave Flyer Button Up Shirt Another dream come true

A Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen plaid Victorian Baby Shirt gender euphoria here I come

The Auralee x New Balance 2024 WRPD Runner in Navy my new everyday shoe, and it’s comfy!