The eternal return of green on the runway Great news if you want to match your look to your matcha latte

It would be inaccurate to say that fashion always moves in unison and, therefore, to avoid saying that everyone copies everyone else, we’ll settle on this position: «Great minds think alike». The minds in question are those of the many designers and stylists who, during the last fashion month or in recent months in general, have brought to their respective runways a very interesting styling solution: creating a relatively simple outfit but placing a piece in an intense, very intense green somewhere within it – often not the deep emerald tone seen in the Dior Homme, Hermès, or Prada shows in the form of outerwear, but rather shades of chartreuse, lime, moss, and basil. In some cases, there was even, if you'll pardon the expression, a salad of different greens arranged in a layering that placed darker tones in the outer layers, such as blazers, and lighter ones in shirts and knitwear worn close to the skin. Ambiguous shades were not missing either: Willy Chavarria, for example, opened his show with a suit somewhere between mint and aquamarine; at Tod’s, a suit from the SS26 collection was an olive that at times looked brown but was paired with a dark green knit under a beige shirt; Lemaire and Kiko Kostadinov instead favored a more familiar military green that borders on earth tones. Still, it is emblematic that several shows, including those by Chavarria, Emporio Armani, Maison Margiela, and Umit Benan, opened or closed with an entirely green look. But what is the meaning behind the return of this color?

Green is perhaps the color that the human eye is best programmed to see, and it has long been said to have calming properties for the mind. Perhaps even more crucially, much like the nature it symbolizes, green tends to cyclically return to the forefront of cultural discourse without ever truly disappearing. Think of how the green that became a symbol of Bottega Veneta, which first appeared shyly in Daniel Lee’s debut FW19 show and then progressively exploded in the brand’s collections, dominated the collective imagination for over a year, generating endless imitations and still remaining one of the brand’s key identifiers today. Last year, there was “Brat Green”, a very acidic shade (and truthfully quite difficult to wear unless you’re a 365 Party Girl) that perhaps dominated social media feeds more than wardrobes, but demonstrated how a certain color could become the symbol of an entire creative project. These two examples, the most well-known of course, don’t so much speak to the importance of green in and of itself or its specific role in the human mental process, but rather to its extreme versatility, which allows it to be, depending on the shade, either a relatively neutral tone like those seen in the collections of Lemaire, Umit Benan, or Niccolò Pasqualetti, or a more visually aggressive one. In any case, there seemed to be no trace of Brat-style neon green: even Nicola Formichetti with PDF, certainly the most flamboyant among the designers considered here, limited his show to mint, olive, and khaki tones – but never “party neon.”

The explanation for this return might perhaps be linked to the state of fashion in the post-quiet luxury era, as we wondered back in February 2024: ever since the massive wave of sobriety erased the graphic and visual excesses of streetwear, refocusing luxury on valuable pieces capable of extreme versatility and longevity, the reaction has been a shift toward informality. In the recent Lyst Top 10 of the most searched products of the last quarter, for example, we find flip-flops, adidas shorts, a tank top, and very flat shoes with, so to speak, a vaguely anonymous aura. There has also been a return of pajamas, loafers worn with socks, and plain gray men's sweaters. This is one extreme of the spectrum, of course, but it’s telling that, to soften and enliven these various looks, green has become either the sharp injection of color intended to act as the visual focal point of a semi-formal outfit or the base canvas on which to build more or less monochromatic looks that offer an alternative to the gray of officecore, the now overused all-black, and the beiges so despised by the more avant-garde and anti-bourgeois fringes of fashion. In any case, it seems we’ll be seeing a lot of green on the streets in the coming months: for some, it will represent a connection with nature, the desire to touch grass after the blue-light irradiation from our smartphones; for others, it will symbolize a return to life and freshness in months filled with depressing news; and for still others, green will be the symbol of hope in a fashion world that no longer knows which saint to turn to.