When Fashion Feels Boring… (& What To Do About It)

Introduction

Hi everyone!

Because style is my favorite subject, today I want to write about something that I’ve been feeling a lot over the last couple of months, and that’s that fashion sometimes doesn’t feel as exciting to me as it used to.

At first, I thought this might have been designers’ fault, that they couldn’t come up with something new. Then, I thought it was my fault, and that I couldn’t see the beauty in front of me.

But I’ve now realized that this reaction is likely due to numerous factors across the fashion industry, as well as my own personal bias.

So, in today’s post I want to explore:

• Why FW25/26 felt like it was missing something

• External factors influencing the fashion industry

• What I’m doing to keep fashion interesting

  
  

Hopefully, by reading this post, you’ll get a better understanding of all of the forces that impact the way we dress, and how to retain enthusiasm for fashion no matter the circumstance.

With that said, let’s get to the post!

Context: Post-Pandemic Fashion

To understand why previous seasons have felt so exciting, I think we need to start with the context that led to them.

During the pandemic, there was a massive shift toward relaxed apparel, with athleisure and loose silhouettes dominating the marketplace.

But as COVID-19 restrictions decreased, consumers were ready to go out and party again, and the fashion industry began making clothes that met this demand.

This excitement fueled color trends like magenta for FW23/24, burgundy for FW24/25, and even butter yellow for Summer 2025.

However, when looking at the past six months of fashion trends, what were the dominant trends?

For FW25/26, we saw polka dots, the rise of teal, linen, camp collars, braided belts, mixed metals, and combinations of black and brown leather, but haven’t we seen that before?

To me, the last couple of months of fashion haven’t been as interesting as past seasons, and I think that this was caused by several global factors over the last year that shifted the manufacturing, merchandising, and styling of clothes in a visible way.'

Supply Chain’s Impact on Fashion Design

When interpreting fashion, especially mass-market fashion, there are so many factors that go into what is considered “cool” that exist outside of the ideas fashion designers come up with when mood boarding.

For example, once it becomes time to start researching and developing new silhouettes, fabrics, and colors for a season, fashion designers are limited by the material, manufacturing, and shipping costs of the current environment.

These conditions can pressure them to cut costs by shrinking assortments, reusing old patterns, and letting go of ideas that would require too many manufacturing samples to get right.

So, given current supply chain conditions like rising shipping costs and labor costs, it’s easy to imagine that when designing FW25/26, fashion designers were pressured to take fewer risks than they have in the past.

And this isn’t to say that this last season was bad.

Instead, I think it’s important to understand that the reason this season seemed different was the result of real-world factors that inhibit creativity and force fashion designers and merchants to make the best with the resources available to them.

This tension between the far-reaching dreams of a designer and the money-bound constraints of manufacturing, shipping, and merchandising is actually one of my favorite parts of fashion retail.

There’s something really special about how fashion is a visual representation of the state of global commerce.

We aren’t just feeling the impacts of the supply chain, we’re seeing them in the clothes we choose to wear, which I’ve always thought is really cool.

My Perspective on Fashion 2024 – 2026

The final thing I want to acknowledge is that my interpretation of the last couple of months of fashion may be biased by my personal experience as a consumer.

From 2022 through 2025, it was an exciting time for me from a fashion perspective because of how much change was going on in my life during that period.

Over the course of three years, I experienced my first internships, my first full-time job, and graduated college, all while studying and working throughout the fashion industry.

This created several shifts in what I wanted to look like, as my environment and who I wanted to be constantly changed. This made shopping more exciting because every time I went looking for clothes, I was looking in a different category with a different goal, which meant I was likely seeing something new each time I went shopping.

So, while I always strive to interpret and think about fashion through a lens outside of my own, I think it’s important to acknowledge that a personal bias may exist in this feeling.

For the sake of integrity, I wouldn’t feel comfortable publishing this without stating that.

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What I’m Doing About It

This brings me back to my original question: what am I going to do to keep fashion interesting, and what can you do if you’re feeling similarly?

The first thing I’ve been doing is challenging myself to think critically about where I pull inspiration when deciding what to wear.

For a long time, what I wore was influenced by a desire to show that I understood what was and would be trending in fashion.

However, recently I’ve started challenging myself to pull inspiration from pop culture, mood images, and people in my life that I’m inspired by.

I’ve also been challenging myself to think about how my outfits fit together across a week instead of treating each outfit as its own entity.

Doing this has kept fashion exciting because it’s forced me to craft my outfits in response to something other than clothing alone, and instead the spirit of fashion itself.

Fashion isn’t just clothing, it’s what’s aspirational, and if I sense a cultural gravitation toward self-expression, then that is in fashion, even if current styling doesn’t reflect it yet.

The other thing I’ve been doing is taking inventory of the elements of fashion history and theory that I’m lacking knowledge in.

For example, I could use a better understanding of fashion history and the role of fashion criticism, so I’ve been using the past couple of months to explore these topics, which has helped me find my passion for fashion again.

Lastly, I’ve been challenging myself to find and celebrate the brands and collections that are really adding something new to today’s fashion conversation.

Old Navy’s collaboration with Christopher John Rogers, or new brands like Oxknit Clothing, come to mind as brands that are doing something vibrant and exciting.

It’s been really rewarding channeling my creative energy into uplifting these clothes, which has also helped me regain my interest in fashion.

Conclusion

To conclude, while every fashion season may not catch your eye, it’s still possible to keep fashion interesting if you turn your curiosity inward toward your own evaluation and practices in fashion.

I feel like this season has taught me that there’s so much nuance to fashion outside of what’s in style, and I hope that this post helped you see that.

Fashion isn’t just about what’s on the runway, it’s about what we as the wearer decide to uplift and what we want to say in response to what we see.

By seeing ourselves as agents in fashion instead of passengers, we can move fashion toward the vibrant, expressive, and celebratory world we all want to see.

But until then, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

-JM

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