Outdated Trends To Ditch For Fall 2025

Summer, in its usual playful generosity, gave us plenty to look at. There were the saturated brights that dominated its hottest 2025 color trends, the full-throated return of the once-outdated eyelet embroidery, and the nostalgic revival of a particular shoe trend. There were the best beach reads for your summer reading list and the fisherman aesthetic trend for the laidback and coastal vibe. But the light is shifting and the air has taken on its first dry edge. The season is beginning to turn.

And now, the calendar tilts towards fall — when that back-to-school feeling reimagines itself for adulthood. Carrying the same charge of a new term, autumn comes with the perennial appeal of a clean slate. It's a fitting backdrop, then, for reconsidering what's hanging in the closet. If summer was indulgent, fall 2025 is shaping up to be more considered. We're trading whimsy for structure, and microtrends for longevity. In that spirit of reinvention, WOMEN spoke exclusively to celebrity stylist Joseph Katz about the fashion trends we'll be leaving behind this season. Fall fashion is turning over a new leaf, and there are some trends that won't be windswept with it.

If money talks, then wealth whispers (or so the logic went). That was the ethos behind the rise of quiet luxury — a trend that offered fashion an absolution and a fantasy of wealth so deeply ingrained, it no longer needed to declare itself. It was an aesthetic of restraint, accompanied by clean hemlines, conservative cuts, muted palettes, and not a logo in sight. It was Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy's chic and simple style repackaged for the algorithm, a frictionlessly expensive (or so it would seem) set of uniform style essentials to channel our inner Shiv Roy.

But according to stylist Joseph Katz, the silence is softening. "We're going to see less of the overly quiet luxury, which is the very simple no logos," he said, "to something with a bit more expression." Perhaps it's for the best. The quiet luxury and old money aesthetics had us chasing an unattainable ideal — one that often conflated elegance with exclusion. The mood now is still refined, but there's more room to exhale.

But whilst quiet luxury no longer holds the sway it once did, logo-driven streetwear isn't filling the vacuum either. For now, the fashion pendulum seems content to hover somewhere in between, with the moment belonging to wardrobes that possess something more durable. As Katz told WOMEN, "Customers are leaning into something that will last more than one season." What's emerging is a curated variety of references, "with styles ranging from boho to bold textures, eclectic materials, and eye-catching prints." If you're still wearing this kind of nuanced layering come next fall as well, we won't blame you.

There was a brief, nostalgic moment when low-rise jeans were back and were surprisingly wearable. They slouched down runways and resurfaced on Instagram, and found a poster girl in Zendaya, who pioneered the low-rise skirt trend and made it look good. But low-rise was always a gamble, a trend that demanded more than it gave, and the dalliance was short-lived. According to celebrity stylist Joseph Katz, the rise is rising once again. "The trend of low-rise is going out, " he told WOMEN. "We're seeing a return to mid- and high-rise trousers with tailored structure — think wide-leg pleats, wool blends, and draped suiting pants that work from day to night."

He described it as part of what he called "the Power Office direction" — a reimagining of what it means to dress with purpose, without falling into the stiffness of traditional workwear. As more of the world has firmly settled into a post-pandemic return to office, fashion is recalibrating its idea of business casual. "We are seeing a classic turn to the '80s tailored shirts, blazers and tailoring pants," which are being "reinterpreted with a touch of rebellion," Katz explained. He pointed to jackets from Norma Kamali and JW PE as signals of the mood.

Over the last few years, designers have seemed locked in a game of how little fabric could still constitute a garment. Entire torsos disappeared under the guise of minimalism; sleeves and waists dissolved into negative space. But for fall 2025, overly excessive cutouts make up another trend that has not made the cut.

"The overly excessive cutouts are going to change in the fall," Katz noted, "and lean to more of an edgy romantic style." In place of starkly naked ambition, you'll see different explorations of daring sensuality in sheer lace, tulle, and deeper tones. We might have seen it coming; Dior's fall/winter 25 show in Paris flirted openly with this indie sleaze aesthetic. With lace-lined slip garments and kohl-rimmed eyes, there's a trace of '90s Drew Barrymore in the mix — and finds a contemporary echo in labels like The Kooples and AllSaints.

For a brief spell, we all embraced the polka dot renaissance when it came to greet us. But as with most fashion revivals, the charm was fleeting. The pattern has begun to recede and in its place, a more linear language is taking hold. The dot has given way to the line. Stripes are reassuring themselves, and designers are drawing their silhouettes accordingly. At Fendi, Isabel Marant, Erdem, and Massimo Dutti, the pattern is on the straight and narrow through trousers, skirts, and knits with a newfound precision.

Ripe and sunlit, tomato red had its season as the pick of the punch in summer 2025. It was the color that helped us emulate breezy Italian summer dressing. But as the season changes, so does the shade. Pantone, the authority on color, revealed its report on the palette of New York Fashion Week's autumn/winter 2025 shows. The hues of this cycle, they found, are "imbued with a poetic nuance, creating a blend of casual relaxation with subtle elegance" (via FashionUnited).

The season's top saturations, Pantone explains, offer "a lively color dialogue between well-known, traditional neutrals and dynamic and bold and deep seasonal hues." Among them are shades of lemon, orange, teal, cozy browns, a gentle pink, an intense purple — and notably, three quirky reds. Pantone 17-1640 "Winterberry" is "a shade they say "gives pleasure and ignites the senses." They described Pantone 18-1440 "Chili Oil" as "seasoned yet seasonless for AW25." Meanwhile, Pantone 17-1664 "Poppy Red" took a star turn at Marc Jacobs' New York Public Library show.