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Soft Power Takes Over Spring/Summer 2025: A New Era of Feminine Strength and Effortless Elegance
Dec
The Spring/Summer 2025 runways were filled with bold new ideas, as emerging designers took charge of major fashion houses, offering a fresh perspective on style. Among the standout trends, powder pink emerged as the dominant color, signaling a softer, yet luxurious shift. This season’s collections brought a sense of opulence and grandiosity, ushering in a new era of extravagance. At the same time, designers emphasized a return to personal style and individuality, reflecting a growing desire for self-expression. One major trend already making waves for 2025 is soft power. While this term was coined by Nicolas Ghesquière in the Louis Vuitton show notes, its influence was evident throughout Fashion Month.
Soft power dressing was particularly evident at Bottega Veneta in Milan, where the brand’s interpretation of tailored suiting took on relaxed, yet powerful silhouettes. This juxtaposition of strength and sophistication—a feminine-meets-masculine take on workwear—was further highlighted at Paris Fashion Week, where Saint Laurent closed the first day of shows with oversized suiting, accessorized with ties, bold glasses, and leather aviator jackets. The look quickly gained traction off the runway, with celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber adopting the trend. Stella McCartney also embraced this soft power aesthetic, introducing romanticized suiting, combining draped skirts with blazers and trench coats. Loewe also explored this theme, using soft dove gray and chocolate brown hues to underscore the trend.
The soft power trend on the Spring/Summer 2025 runway was epitomized by Saint Laurent’s collection, where Anthony Vaccarello showcased oversized suiting paired with unexpected details like ties and leather aviator jackets, reinforcing the idea that the trend is as relevant as ever.
At Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy’s collection stood out for balancing softness with playful elements, merging sharp tailoring with fluid silhouettes. The brand’s wrap-effect cotton skirts added a sense of softness while maintaining the collection’s bold, empowering feel.
In his Louis Vuitton collection, Nicolas Ghesquière eloquently described soft power as a fascinating contradiction—balancing softness and strength in a sartorial statement. This idea of “sartorial soft power” captures the essence of this trend, where fashion moves between two opposing forces, creating harmony through unexpected combinations.
Other designers, such as Stella McCartney, took this concept even further, introducing tailored skirts and trench coats with rounded, draped silhouettes—proving that even structured looks can convey softness when executed with finesse. Ferragamo, too, played with softness in their S/S 25 collection, where classic trench coats were reimagined in crinkled fabrics and soft-toned accessories such as dove gray pumps and white leather clutches.
For Christopher Esber, Slinky suiting and fluid shirting became the dominant elements for 2025, showing that powerful yet gentle styling will define the year ahead. Similarly, Gabriela Hearst embraced soft elements in traditionally edgy pieces, adding bows and delicate details to leather trench coats and structured bags, bringing a nostalgic yet contemporary twist to the soft power theme.
With this fresh take on power dressing, the Spring/Summer 2025 collections have firmly established that soft power is not just a trend, but a fundamental shift in the way we approach style for the years to come.
