New York Fashion Week's Best Spring 2025 Looks Redefine Real Clothes

The final day of New York Fashion Week's Spring 2025 season arrived the morning after MTV's 2024 Video Music Awards. During the ceremony, stars like Katy Perry, Chappell Roan, and Tyla wore sheer naked dresses and shredded two pieces with underwear poking through, some (like Perry's) still warm from walking a Spring 2025 runway days before. Covering the VMAs' most memorable looks for Marie Claire reinforced a truth every fashion editor knows: a lot of trends set by designers are designed first and foremost for celebrities. Or social media. Or celebrities who can't stay off social media.

It only took waking up the next morning and heading to work to see the counterpoint to my own argument in flesh, blood, and fabric. And thank goodness: I was running out of things I wanted to wear. The best looks of New York Fashion Week's Spring 2025 collections, championed by women-led brands, of course, aren't designing for shock value—and they're not settling for staid "wearability," either.

Actually, there are some designers who've internalized the more over-the-top trends percolating for the past few seasons—like exaggerated fringe or sheer skirts—and found a way to make them work for Hollywood civilians. At the same time, they've pushed the business-woman special outfits on the other end of the spectrum in a more adventurous direction. In the middle: Heaps of clothes that are definitely wearable, but also interesting.

My last morning of shows began at Kallmeyer, where designer Daniella Kallmeyer injected suggestions of big trends—a sheer skirt here, an open-back, draped plaid top with trousers there—into her signature smart tailoring. A shirt with a built-in coordinating tie returned in a gorgeous shade of deep marigold yellow. Classic black suits were remixed with A-line skirts for a bottom instead of pants. Drapey dresses flowed like a river while somehow not skewing too formal. From the second row, I saw a lineup I would buy in its entirety if I didn't have student loan payments.

"We got to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone as far as colors and textures and even certain shapes, while always revisiting and returning back to the Kallmeyer DNA," Kallmeyer tells me in a voice memo a few days after the show, her first runway format in many seasons. And while the room was full, a splashy debut wasn't necessarily the point. "At the end of the day, what matters the most to us is a making sure that after these clothes leave the runway and end up in your wardrobe," she says. "That they feel like easy, loyal, trendless pieces that you can tie back into your existing style DNA and sort of future wearability."

Kallmeyer's collection ended the week on a high note, and it wasn't the only one that designed pieces I'm actively looking forward to shopping come April. Reviewing my camera roll filled with standouts from Tibi and Maria McManus, "future wearability" was the operative phrase. Designers Amy Smilovic and the titular Maria also understand how to ever-so-slightly modify peek-a-boo fabrics, or even naked shoes, for women who will probably never step foot on a red carpet. It's a matter of balancing fabrics that reveal with more concealing shapes and colors—then styling them with an oversize blazer or a drop-waist top.

The moment Marie Claire fashion director Sara Holzman and I walked into the cavernous, candlelit loft where Diotima's Spring 2025 presentation was held, we knew designer Rachel Scott was on the same page. Show notes said the collection was born of a "Carribbean dream," and there's always been a beachy sensibility to Scott's crochets and seashell-like paliette embellishments. Yet when Scott styles a crochet, fringe-lined skirt with a black eyelet floral button-down, or a so-draped-it-could-be-wet column dress over cork wedge clogs, I see a version of summertime dressing that doesn't have to be reserved for a resort. "This is actually something I'd wear," Holzman said, snapping a few pictures on her phone.

Of course, we aren't just wearing clothes. According to Rachel Comey's Spring 2025 show notes, we also "work, tour, talk, meet, vouch, argue, celebrate, debate, win, lose, listen, flow, arrive, make, stretch, change, find, hustle, carry" in our outfits. I didn't doubt that I could do all those things in her draped blazers and lightly flared skirts if I wanted to. I also felt, seeing one of her trousers paired with a thigh-length fringe top or a business-y skirt matched to a blazer without a shirt underneath—and on models of all ages—that I could do those things without having to resort to a business casual startup brand. There was fun and refinement up for the task of the "book tour, industry event, or conference room" also mentioned in Comey's show notes, or maybe even an A-lister's schedule. Jemima Kirke, across the room from me, couldn't stop taking pictures during the show—like she was filling her camera roll with her own closet references.

New York Fashion Week's Spring 2025 season is book-ended by another awards show, the Emmys on Sunday, Sept. 15. There will be trends set and reinforced on that red carpet, as is the case with every other. But if it's "future wearability" you're after, sit tight until next spring. This crop of designers made pieces worth waiting for.