At last! Fashion gets comfy

Fashion sells heady dreams of reinvention, but the keenest shift over the past decade is the softening of our wardrobes and slaking off of aesthetic expectation.

Harry Styles has long hung up his feather boa for a blue chore jacket; once supermodels and movie stars launched fitness videos, now Gigi Hadid has a cashmere line, as does Brad Pitt. Ella Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter, alleviates her climate anxiety by filming knitting tutorials; Chloe Malle was christened head of American Vogue in a loose shirt and jeans; even the Pope wears a baseball cap.

At Jonathan Anderson’s first menswear show for Dior in June this year his models wore trainers with laces trailing; baggy jeans were paired with untucked shirts and ties askew. The celebrities in attendance, from Rihanna to Robert Pattinson, had the same scruffy air. Anderson had taken inspiration from Monsieur Dior’s elaborate gowns, but used the dramatic folds of his Delft dress as a detail on a pair of cargo shorts worn with slippers akin to those posh hotels give out. High inspiration taken low. He described the look as if “these kids found it in Christian Dior’s closet and just threw it on”.

The streetwear impact on fashion dressed down the 2010s, exploding in the pandemic when life was experienced in the comfort of a tracksuit. Five years on, the predicted reverse into overt, complicated dressing never came. Instead, quiet luxury seeped in, the aspiration of wealth decoded in a cashmere sweater. Dress codes have realigned somewhere between smart and casual, with an expectation of ease at all times. It’s there in the way jeans are wide and loosely tapered, in suits worn with T-shirts and trainers, and Adidas track pants viewed by Vogue editors as interchangeable with tailored trousers; shirts billow, half tucked in, ironing an irrelevant art. It’s in jumpers worn reassuringly across shoulders; coats akin to dressing gowns rendered in fuzzy faux fur; sweet little foulard scarves tossed around the neck and in the new winter flex of a knitted bonnet. It’s Birkenstocks worn year round with thick socks, ground-hugging trainers, suede loafers with rugby shirts; the juggernaut Ugg revival with its sales increasing 13% to $2.5bn this year.

At Celine, newly incumbent designer Michael Rider created a casual preppy ideal with a dose of gauche Left Bank flair; stretchy jodhpurs, lace-up boxing boots (not a heel in the whole show), faux-fur chubby jackets and undone hair. Celine, “doesn’t need to distract or push into the realm of abstraction in order to excite” he told W magazine.

Fashion’s HR moves aren’t immune here, either. Clare Waight Keller has gone from designing Givenchy Haute Couture to creative director at Uniqlo, more interested in what people wear at the airport than on the red carpet. Similarly, Zac Posen, best known for elaborate taffeta gowns, is redefining Gap’s blue jeans and white shirts as its creative head.

“It” shoes used to be towering heels with elaborate designs. In the 00s it was standard to spend the first five minutes before any party or outside the office in the morning wobbling in a doorway to change into a vertiginous heel. Covid all but killed off the high heel; and stiletto sales slid a further 12% in 2024. It is striking flats – from Miu Miu loafers to Alaïa ballet pumps – which have cut through. Sarah Burton’s first punt at a Givenchy accessory hit is a square toe ballet flat, while at The Row’s last Paris show cashmere-swathed models padded across the carpet in tights and no shoes at all.

Alexa Chung, Dakota Johnson and Daisy Edgar-Jones are all fans of Le Monde Béryl, a cult footwear brand which has made its mark reintroducing the humble Mary-Jane. Its founder Lily Atherton Hanbury said, “Comfort wasn’t just a factor, it was fundamental to our philosophy – women shouldn’t have to choose between elegance and movement.” Its signature Luna slipper, a soft leather flat with a rounded toe, is a constant best-seller, with sales increasing 110% this year. Meanwhile, Dr. Martens are citing comfort as the key enticement for their new Zebzag boot – a pull-on style with a lighter sole than the counter-culture classic. Adam Meek, its chief product officer, posits that “the most radical thing right now is ease”.

At the highest end of the firmament, Phoebe Philo is redefining the silhouette around volume, where extravagant comfort is key. For her latest collection, a model leans back in a chair, cocooned by a cashmere camel coat, legs up on the table, a pair of stretchy pleated trousers pooling around flat pumps. The Swedish brand Toteme (looking to hit $150m in sales in its 10th year) has inspired imitators with its scarf-edged, blanket-stitch coats, this winter proposing fluffy shearlings and layers of soft knits. ME+EM has seen rapid growth (up 46% in 2024 with £120m in sales) off the back of what founder Clare Hornby calls “relaxed luxury”. On the high street, Damson Madder has taken over as the school gate’s baggy leopard-print, little padded jackets of choice. Incidentally, brands bucking the retail slowdown are designed by women, understanding that we are more likely to dress for ourselves or each other than any partner. Hence comfort not constriction, and an abandonment of restrictive underpinnings. Gillott, on holiday, agrees that ditching patriarchal standards encourages comfort. “We’re trying to move away from dressing for the male gaze. When you aren’t dressing to impress,” she says, “you dress for function: to relax, to dance, or to study.” A lecturer at Central Saint Martins echoes her friends when he tells me at a party that: “No one at CSM wears a bra. Whatever the cup size.”

It is an evolution away from the expected. “Fashion has always been about aspiration and class mobility but we’re entering an era where those binaries don’t exist anymore” says Caroline Stevensen, Programme Director of Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion. “Gen Z has rejected binary thinking.” Comfort fashion, “is a mix of gender fluidity, creating singular looks that will adapt and fit to many body types.”

This shift is across the board. Maddy Evans, director of M&S Woman, where searches for “oversized” have increased 86% this year, describes comfort as “a non-negotiable for our customers. It’s become a source of confidence for many, allowing them to express their personality a little more,” in fabrics that feel, “polished but never restrictive”.

The merging of dress codes is both practical and economical. With the advent of hybrid working, office wear has loosened, but equally, the logic of only buying clothes for certain days isn’t viable in an inhospitable economy. “Your clothing has to adapt,” says Stevensen. Alongside this, the way we perceive power has shifted. The emergence of the tech bro superclass means that “the most powerful people in the world no longer have to wear suits. Dressing for comfort has shifted. People are not only at home more, with less money, they have fewer things to do, fewer reasons to dress up,” says Robin Mellery-Pratt, co-founder of intelligence and strategy company Matter, who works with luxury brands including Chloé and Versace. The suit, he says, is not dead, but more localised. Men are still pouring out of City pubs in “blue suits and white shirts” but it’s rarer to see suiting out of traditional environments.

Ultimately, it’s fashion that meets us where we are, rather than coercing us into an invented persona. The new codes of comfort are a welcome anathema for those who looked on in bemusement at the Bezos wedding’s brash and body-clinging outfits, where rigid gender tropes were a political stake in the ground. Ambition doesn’t look like an Apprentice candidate in a clingy suit; there is an art to being understated, and presenting our real selves rather than an inauthentic version of someone we think we’re supposed to be. It’s fashion that likes us just the way we are. Now that really is comforting.

Opening image credits from left to right: Lamb motif cardigan £495, S.S. DALEY. Socks £24, Rock and Ruby. Red ballerinas £750, Miu Miu. Simone Rocha AW25. Prada AW25. TOTEME AW25. Shirt £130, WNU. Triangle Scarf £49, TBCo. Loafers £195, Grenson