Having analysed the spring/summer 2024 fashion trends for months now (literally), I’m here to tell you about the ones that are genuinely wearable and will truly affect your wardrobe for the next six months (and beyond, if I have anything to do with it). There’s a lot to talk about for S/S 24, but this hasn’t always been the catwalk way. If all the world’s a stage, Fashion Month has long been the costume cupboard—a trove of froth and tulle, sparkle and glitter designed to catch the eye and hold it. A dressing-up box that, although delightful and entertaining to lose yourself in, doesn’t always hold up in reality. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—we could all use some fabulous escapism from time to time—but, ultimately, when you venture out from the sanctity of your wardrobe, you need to be able to live in these creations. At least in the physical realm—we’ll get into the virtual later. For spring/summer 2024, I have to applaud designers for creating collections that, yes, hold beauty, but also have a place in the everyday. But first, let’s travel back to September and October of last year and reflect on how things unfolded.
Across the four fashion capitals—New York, London, Milan and Paris—a total of 299 designers showcased their collections, 19 new to the Fashion Month circuit, compared to 247 for spring/summer 2023 (credit to the fashion data analysts at Tagwalk for doing these calculations). Growth is a good thing, especially in creative industries, but I found this hard to believe, personally. Off the top of my head, I can think of a handful of designers who couldn’t secure budget to show, or whose brands were lost to greater financial struggles (I still can’t move on from the Christopher Kane-shaped hole that permeated the London schedule).
With growth always comes change, and perhaps one of the biggest this season came in the form of a renunciation. Alexander McQueen’s Creative Director Sarah Burton announced that the spring/summer 2024 collection would be her last after 26 years at the brand. Burton had respectfully taken the helm after the British institution’s iconic and groundbreaking founder Lee Alexander McQueen passed away in 2010, with her subsequent collections serving as a love letter to his influence and precociousness. Cate Blanchett attended, Naomi Campbell walked and a standing ovation rang out during the final, tender moments of Paris Fashion Week.
Milan witnessed a big change, too. Gucci’s new creative director Sabato De Sarno held positions at Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino before taking on this role, which catapulted him and his first collection for the brand into the spotlight last September. Buyers, editors and celebrities descended upon the Italian city to take in the spectacle—ask any fashion devotee without a ticket and they would likely have told you they’d give away their Birkin to have a front-row seat at this show.
There’s no denying that De Sarno’s predecessor Alessandro Michele kept Gucci on the fashion map with his geek-chic sensibilities; an aesthetic that would define a moment in fashion history. Still, moments pass, and we saw De Sarno usher Gucci into a new era, one that places more value on essentials over eccentricities—a notion we’re seeing across the rest of the industry.
A business built upon the customer’s desire to be seen in shiny new things will always have its issues. However, the thing that felt “new” this season was that some things just didn’t change at all. Perhaps the most noteworthy takeaway was that trends don’t seem to hold the same power that they used to. I’m generalising, of course—things get meta real fast if you so much as take a peek into the no-trends-actually-being-a-trend rabbit hole—but it feels as if creating trends for the sake of it could be a thing of the past. “The spring/summer 2024 collections have shown a continued commitment to 1990s nostalgia and the extraordinary everyday, where everyday items are elevated to exceptional levels of design and style whilst remaining chic and comfortable,” observes Net-a-Porter’s market director Libby Page. And she’s right. The market has experienced a shift of tectonic proportions in recent years where a genuine focus on quality over quantity and investing in things that last has become a priority for previously frivolous shoppers. The latest collections reflected this.
The spring/summer 2024 showcase was set against an uncertain economic and political backdrop, which may have led many designers to approach their collections with extra consideration. The customer has become more mindful too, further aware of their consumption and the downright privilege that it is to be a consumer right now. Yes, there will always be an appetite to shop, but there is a deliberate attempt to be less ostentatious about it (read: there will be far fewer logos this season). Of the trends, many carried on from previous seasons, not just the last. In addition to what Page observed above, from the palette to the prints down to finer details such as jewellery, big bags and ballet flats, it felt like we’d seen much of it all before, but this time with a renewed appeal. No big leaps were made—which is good in terms of our bank balances and wardrobes—and our editors were able to envision themselves wearing much of what they saw in their daily lives. Let’s hear it for the wide-leg trousers!
The more directional trends we did see were there to spark joy at a time when it felt like it might have been in short supply. There was a celebration of colour throughout, which could have quite easily taken over this entire trend report. Red continues to dominate, with Hermès’ designs acting as a stoic antithesis to the candy-pop looks that lined the Versace, Prada and Eudon Choi runways. There was shimmer but with a shakeup; silhouettes were stronger and the overall sweetness was distilled. Florals, for spring? They’ll never be groundbreaking, but with seismic petal proportions and blooms that jump off the toile they’re delicately attached to, there’s new life to be found in the trend that we assumed we’d seen everything from.
“As someone who is self-diagnosed as ‘chronically online’, I’ve seen a lot of flash-in-the-pan trends over the past few seasons,” says Elinor Block, editorial lead at luxury fashion gaming company Drest, which enables its users to create infinite outfit possibilities in the metaverse. “The past year we saw Barbiecore, ‘blokecore’ and ‘tomato-girl summer’ emerge as some of the bigger, zeitgeisty aesthetics adopted by Gen Z and the TikTok crowd. And whilst some are rooted in major trends, when it comes to real life, there’s no doubt that longevity and items that work season after season are a bigger draw.
“When playing with clothes in Drest, however, there’s definitely a different kind of approach I take to dressing. The virtual world allows me to style looks that I might not have considered before with more out-there pieces from high-octane brands such as David Koma or Balmain—I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that cherry-red, rose-covered dress that I spied on the S/S 24 runway. It gives me a chance to be more experimental and see how I can move that into my IRL wardrobe without taking too much of a risk.” This, dear reader, is what the modern-day dressing-up box looks like.
As always, any piece you invest in, be it inspired by the trends below or otherwise, should only be purchased if you intend on keeping it in your wardrobe for a very, very long time. I’ve gone to great lengths to cherry-pick the ones that have a chance.
So, without further ado, keep reading for our rundown of the most important spring/summer 2024 fashion trends as told by the experts, including some of Who What Wear UK’s own editor talent.