A colour palette is always a good indicator of the over-arching mood of a season, and the spring/summer 2025 collections were defined by an overwhelming feeling of positivity. “Fashion can take us places, and one of designers’ chosen destinations for spring was cloud nine,” Laird Borrelli-Persson explained in Vogue’s trend report. “This was a season in which air was the predominant element and ethereality abounded.” Many clothes quite literally floated down the runway, and so it’ll come as no surprise that the dominant colours for summer 2025 are equally uplifting.
A summer palette always has an optimistic zing to it, but for 2025 there is added softness to match the rippling, light-as-air fabrics. Instead of saturated brights with the colour pigment dialled up the max, there is a more romantic quality, with powder pinks, butter yellows and cool icy blues. They all have cool undertones that stop them from tipping into sickly pastel territory, meaning these shades can function much like a neutral when it comes to styling.
Pantone named “Mocha Mousse” as the colour of 2025, and deep browns will continue to resonate in our summer wardrobes – chocolate brown midi-dresses are poised to be a big commercial hitter this summer, rivalling your classic white and black dresses. For those who prefer to spend the summer months cloaked in vibrant hues, perhaps the Aperol-hued tangerine shade that we saw at Bottega Veneta and Burberry will satisfy your colour cravings.
Below you’ll find a comprehensive breakdown of the key colour trends that are incoming for summer 2025.
Butter yellow
We have already declared butter yellow as the key colour for spring 2025, and that will continue well into August. Positioned as a creamy neutral, this pale yellow ranges from light Lurpak to more golden varieties. It’s as easy to style as any shade within the beige family, as shown at Toteme, Chloé, Chanel, 16Arlington and Zimmermann, where this vanilla hue was used extensively. Sarah Burton is another key driving force behind the butter movement, as she used this specific shade in her debut autumn/winter 2025 collection for Givenchy and dressed Timothée Chalamet as a “stick of butter” in a custom suit for the Oscars.
Chocolate brown
Like yellow, brown is a colour that is traditionally less popular with consumers, but that has all changed in 2025. It functions within your everyday wardrobe much like black or navy, yet has a more indulgent quality that can elevate even the most basic of items. The likes of Max Mara, The Row, Saint Laurent and Prada have been doing solid PR work for brown, leading Pantone to name “Mocha Mousse” as its shade of 2025. Although you will find a wide-ranging palette of beiges and browns dominating new-in sections, with cinnamon, toffee, mahogany and oatmeal tones – this summer we want to be cloaked in chocolate-brown linens.
Powder pink
Instead of saccharine Barbie hues or punchy neons, we have steadily been seeing softer, more muted pinks come to the fore, which are more Glinda than Mattel. This all started in the autumn/winter 2024 collections with the likes of Chloé, Prada and Chanel, with pink styled either head-to-toe, with a dress or tailored suit, or as a pop of colour among neutrals. This colour story has unsurprisingly continued into the summer collections, with delicate rose petal hues seen at Alaïa, Khaite and Miu Miu. There is something undeniably balletic about this specific shade of pink, which Ferragamo leaned into with classic ballet wrap cardigans, pumps fastened with criss-crossed ribbon ascending up the calf and Royal Opera House-worthy stockings.
Tangerine
For those who like to stick to cocktail hues as soon as summer arrives, perhaps this zesty tangerine and clementine – resembling a rum punch or Aperol Spritz – will make it into your beach-bound suitcase. One of the stand-out items in Matthieu Blazy’s spring/summer 2025 collection at Bottega Veneta was an orange draped jersey dress with a caped sleeve – a colour story that was peppered throughout. We loved how a tiered tangerine skirt was worn with a chocolate-brown V-neck jumper – an unlikely pairing that paid off. Another dress of the season was a bright orange mini crafted by Jonathan Anderson in his final collection for Loewe, while Burberry was also feeling orange for 2025.
Icy blue
Blue is always a popular colour for summer months, because there is something undeniably soothing about dressing to match a seascape. Rather than a Maldives-esque aqua, this summer, designers stuck to cooler, icy tones, that look particularly alluring when realised in gossamer-thin dresses, tunics and blouses that all have a light-as-air quality. At Prabal Gurung, a sheer blue dress looked especially elegant when layered over ivory wide-leg trousers, while at Chloé this colour fused perfectly with the ’70s-inspired silhouettes.
This story first appeared in British Vogue.
Also read:
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