Wait…let me cook. Not to overwhelm you with internet speak, but walk with me on this one. Was the Autumn/Winter 2025 season the season of, as the kids say these days, ‘reheating nachos’?
While this piece of online parlance — a metaphor for when someone does something that’s been done before, most commonly used to compare pop stars’ careers — is already overused, it’s true that this season, the remixes were particularly memorable. As it pertains to fashion, the premise as I see it is simple: ‘reheating nachos’ equates to designers revisiting their own past collections, those from the house they currently design for or… someone else’s. References in art and design are common; what’s new is that fashion’s love for nostalgia has gotten so strong that rehashing the past is now a fully fledged business strategy — albeit one with varying degrees of success.
The harsh reality of the current luxury landscape is that new equals risky. It’s safer to lean into tried-and-true formulas than to place a wager — see the plethora of head-to-toe black looks on the runways or the amount of corporate inspo in collections, from classic business casual to power dressing. There was a time in which runways were a place for directional ideas rather than a parade of merely commercial propositions. This has changed now, which is not to say that commerce is the antithesis of creativity.
Getting references right
A recurring argument this season was how ‘same-y’ the collections felt from New York through Paris. It’s true — a quick scroll through Vogue Runway reveals most collections marketed to contain similar elements: a furry handbag, a curvaceous blazer, an oversized coat with a matching shawl, and even the same kind of The Row-adjacent ‘non-shoe’ footwear. Brands are looking across the aisle to be competitive at a time of financial difficulty. That is fair game, but the general consensus is that too much of fashion looks the same today, and, most poignantly, is geared towards the exact same consumer.
But it’s true that runways are now more visible than ever from a consumer’s standpoint, which presents a one-to-one merchandising opportunity. Dries Van Noten, for one, famously only showed what he sold, and Julian Klausner’s debut as the designer’s successor managed to effortlessly carry through that formula while providing something fresh.
Considering this season’s runways, some recipes are menu go-tos for a reason — they always hit the spot — and some dishes taste better the next day, or in the case of Saint Laurent, a couple of decades later. Consider Anthony Vaccarello’s mining of the Yves Saint Laurent archives with collections that can only be described as, to use more internet speak, hit after hit after hit. It certainly aids Vaccarello that the source material is the stuff of fashion legend, but what he’s accomplished by modernising everything from the 1961 Le Saharienne safari jacket to YSL’s iconic own personal look is remarkable.
