Reflecting on the State of Fashion in 2025

Yohji Yamamoto warns that fashion has lost its way, trading craftsmanship, creativity, and inclusivity for hype, sameness, and profit.

In an interview with Business of Fashion in October of last year, the legendary designer Yohji Yamamoto expressed his frustrations with the fashion industry. Granted, there were always lots of things that Yamamoto never cared for in the industry, but after more than 40 years working within it, the changes that he talked about are very much apparent.

Yamamoto lamented the loss of skills in fashion, as specialists and artisans are dying out with little to no successors, making the production process for fashion more challenging and expensive. On the other hand, the fashion industry at large increasingly uses more synthetic fabrics for their products, all while maintaining a steady rise in prices.

As Yamamoto put it, “It’s all about money. The major companies of fashion, they’re like kids playing soccer, just running after the ball. They’re not thinking about their customers. I just think they have too much money, so they don’t need to work hard. Money is always floating on them.”

It is difficult to disagree on Yamamoto’s stance on the subject. Aside from the creativity and commercialization, there are other issues like sustainability that gets swept aside as the scale of the industry and the pace customers consume fashion gets bigger and faster. Just a few years back, it seems that fashion is on track to unlearn its toxic tendencies, yet 2025 showed us that it regresses back to said familiar tendencies.

Before, inclusivity was en vogue, whether in sizing, gender, and career chances, yet today things are pretty much the same way as decades back. Creative directors and heads of established labels change every couple seasons to the point that it’s hard to keep track. This leaves no room for said creative directors to establish their identities within the brand and build meaningful relationships with their customer base. And yet, despite the huge creative burden this cycle creates, the fashion ecosystem still plays the musical chair game where they switch out the same creative directors between each other over and over again, instead of giving new voices a chance. It is estimated that women make up 74% of fashion students, yet only around 12% of creative directors are women. Without naming names, fashion houses now tend to pick creative directors based on their star power and fame, as opposed to talent.

The situation creates sameness across the whole ecosystem. Aside from a handful of houses, the days when labels are easily distinguished for their identity, character, and craft seems to be long gone. What’s at the forefront is how to generate the most buzz, create viral moments, and market products. On the runways, size zero models became the norm once again as trends shift, which begs the question; were there ever earnest attempts by established labels to embrace the diversity of consumers across the board? Or was inclusivity always about marketing? Yes, fashion houses are allowed to have their creative vision and yes, not everything is for everyone, but if this results in widespread sameness, then what’s the point of it all?

At the end of the day, yes, fashion is an industry, but isn’t there a way to move forward in a better way? This is not to put the blame on a single party alone, yet the problems have been expressed in different ways many times. So why do they persist? This piece is not to be taken as a pessimistic note, but more of an open-ended question on how we can be more critical towards fashion as a means of expressing our enthusiasm for it. After all, who would bother critiquing something they don’t care about? As 2026 is just beginning, this might be a good time for us to remind ourselves of this before we get caught up in the fashion calendar and its spectacles again.

Images: Courtesy of The Impression, Pexels