With another season of catwalk shows coming to a close, the world’s heavyweight fashion houses have set the tone for SS24 and given fans a taste of what to expect. Next season’s trends have already been spotted on tastemakers and A-listers alike.
From fresh hues to unexpected textures, discover all the trends that came out of fashion month.
Blue Hues
The summer may have been dominated by a Barbiecore-inspired fuchsia frenzy, but the latter half of the year looks to be cooling down a bit on the colour wheel.
From statement collaborations like Martine Rose’s take on the Nike Shox, to more classic examples like a pair of worn-in blue and white Nike Dunk High Retro’s, shades of blue were all over the streets of London, Paris and Milan this season.
We’ve seen brands getting ahead of this curve already, with Nike x A-COLD-WALL* releasing a vibrant cobalt blue pair of TN Air Max Plus as part of a three pair collection in September and adidas riding the Samba popularity with general release pairs like the Royal Blue colourway already proving to be hugely sought after.
A Metallic Kick
If you’ve been paying attention over the last six months, seeing silvered shoes will come as no surprise. Thanks to the popularity of collaborative pairs from the likes of adidas and Wales Bonner’s silver Sambas, and trending silhouettes like the Onitsuka Tiger we had a summer flooded with reflective materials that added space-age flare to rotations — and with other big players dialling up their efforts by revisiting some Y2K inspired models like the Nike P-6000, shiny shoes are going to be all around us as we head into the new year.
If you’re looking to step into this style yourself, but aren’t sure where to start, look at styles from Asics, like the Gel-Kayano 14, which isn’t so much jumping on this trend but one of the styles that has this metallic material-use baked into its DNA from initial releases.
While you might not be replacing all of your day-to-day footwear with the silver-clad must-haves, this trend does introduce a level of interest and statement that is harder to achieve with the more common, even bold colourways and might be easier to pair with your existing wardrobe than you think. Thanks to silvers tonal adjacency to neutral colours like white and grey, putting together an outfit that showcases your trend credentials is a matter of swapping out the sneakers you’d usually reach for in those tones for a pair that has the more reflective upper — there’s plenty of brands who aren’t embracing the full Wales Bonner chrome aesthetic too, and only using metallic detailing if just a hint of the space-age is more your speed.
Retro Mode
It’s no secret that retro inspired sneakers have had a stellar few years — New Balance’s 550, adidas’ Samba (and other similar models), and Nike still reigning supreme with their multiple Jordan releases have us all looking back for what we want to be wearing next, and 2024 is shaping up to be no different.
Expect to see the Samba wave continue, with the next instalment of the Wales Bonner partnership recently being shared across social media (four more colourways are reportedly on the way) and more brands like Labrum being brought into the fold and lend their designs to the hugely popular sneaker, but along with the continued adidas dominance, there’s a swing towards turn of the millennium styles seeing a resurgence.
Going hand-in-hand with the metallic sneaker trend, 2024 is likely to see lots of the big players mining the archives for early 2000’s styles that a whole new generation of buyers haven’t been able to get their hands on before. This is another trend that has been slowly gaining ground over the last six months to a year, and is seemingly about to explode — you’ve only got to look to recent collaborations on the New Balance 1906R model from Ganni and Auralee, or the rising popularity of the 860 thanks to recent Aimé Leon Dore releases to see that early 2000s sneakers are gaining momentum as we head into 2024.
