Creative Upheaval & The New Rules of Relevance in 2025
We’ll never not be selling stories in times of turbulence. Image: Sis.
The Lyst Index Q1 2025 got it right in saying “One word can describe how the industry started 2025: turbulence.”
Hell, we can agree the accuracy of their word-choice extends beyond Fashion…hello, tariffs.
Within the first quarter, EIGHT major luxury brands announced changes in creative leadership: Chanel, Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Maison Margiela, Celine, Jil Sander, and Loewe. (Pierpaolo this week.) Is this just everyday, bog-standard industry churn? Nope. It’s likely more a major sign that the creative center of gravity in fashion (and, by extension, culture) is in the shift.
But you’ve already read that article. You already know this.
The instinct in shifty moments like this might be to panic, or dive into trend-hopping, short-term pivots, but instead I’d argue that all this drama presents an alternative (more hopeful) opportunity: a moment to reset and rethink.
A somewhat business-oriented Let Them, if you will…
Self-help lit aside and beyond fashion - looking to key signs and signals e.g. OpenAI japes, old-silhouette revivals and messy conversations on womanhood in 2025, it seems we’re really deep-down being asked a tougher question: what do we want to carry forward, and what needs to be reimagined?
The Good: A Return to Roots, Not Retreat
Ok, let’s start with Chloé.
After years outside the spotlight, the brand has surged back into the Lyst Index top 10 for the first time in its history. The reason? A strategic return to its boho heritage, under the creative direction of Chemena Kamali. It’s a pretty solid example of what happens when a brand not only knows its DNA but understands how to recontextualise it for a new (and original) audience.
That same approach is paying off for adidas, Paraboot, and even PUMA aka brands that are digging into their archives or doubling down on core product wins to gain an uptick in cultural capital. The adidas Taekwondo and the PUMA Speedcat Ballet hybrid are trending, sure but they’re also a signal: a shift in how brands are thinking about continuity and innovation. Neither a carbon copy of ‘the good old days’ nor a sci-fi-future abandonment of the past, instead these silhouettes suggest we braid the two tenses together: tightly, intentionally, and with full awareness of the present.
In our footwear as with digital, are we shifting from prioritising performance to aesthetic with a detour through nostalgia?
It’s all-too tempting to label this as pure nostalgia because nostalgia implies a kind of escapism. This is something else: a kind of strategic restoration? Seems like a pretty solid counterweight to chaos. Afterall, the best change is about balancing the old ways with the new: not ripping the plaster off in the name of progression nor planting heels in the ground à la traditionalism.
Again, let’s ask ourselves: what do we want to carry forward, and what needs to be reimagined?
The Bad: Reckoning with Representation
Fashion's inclusivity is going backwards, but let’s not totally panic just yet: where there’s a backslide, there’s an opportunity. Beyond the more recent, stateside DEI-initiatives slashing, over the past couple of years we’ve generally seen the decline in size inclusivity (down to just 0.3% of looks being plus-size this season), a rise in tradwifery, and a continued underrepresentation of women in creative leadership (see: above leadership changes.) All while brands lead with messaging centred around “elevated” or “refined”. Yikes.
Pure surface over substance. And a whole market of people just…sidelined. Yes, this is an ethical issue and it's a massive strategic opportunity. It is the lowest of the low hanging fruit to consider. While everyone else is busy narrowing their vision (and audience), what if you actually reflected the world as it exists? Just because a headline states a rise in the Tradwife aesthetic, doesn’t mean you buy into it too: ‘when they zig, we zag’ and ‘think different’ afterall.
What if your brand's values actually aligned with, you know…value?
The Ugly Interesting: AI is Reshaping the Search Economy
And then there’s how we access it all.
Calling time on bad search results? ChatGPT now supports a native, AI-driven shopping interface that curates product recommendations based not on performance marketing but on user prompts. That might sound like a silly little small tweak, but it’s actually quite massive. It’s essentially the early buds of what could be a post-algorithmic marketplace, where shoppers aren’t forced into browsing ‘best-of-other-shoppers’ reco carousels, but dialoguing themselves into their own specific product-need-fit. Personal shopping at scale tbd by the quality of your metadata vs. trending product (AI generated) terminology.
So are we set to shift beyond the multi-brand marketplace as the starting point of fashion? Perhaps. In that world, brands must prioritise trend-tracking product metadata (are those flats tagged sneakerina yet?) to be surfaced and storytelling to be selected. Because it’s one thing to get your products showing up technically, and another to convince potential customers to checkout. For that, you’ll need narratives, social-proof and brand recognition aka LORE.
(In my test of who wins the search battleground of the ‘sneakerina’ it’s PUMA all the way…in case you were wondering.)
So…when the ground shifts
What do we want to carry forward, and what needs to be reimagined?
Put all of this together, and what shows up is less of a forecast of a predetermined future, more of a call to change what needs to be changed in turbulent times.
Not going back. Remembering forward:
balance letting go of the old with the promise of the new
prioritise people-first design not PR
invest in lore, not just marketing
So if you’re in a position to lead brand, product, or creative direction right now, ask yourself: What part of your archive (literal or metaphorical) feels really really true today? Who is telling your story, and are they the right person to do it? What do your customers want to trust you with, not just buy from you?
Now’s your chance to shape it.