Fashion month wrapped weeks ago, my sketchbook is full of drop-waist skirts and red tights, and I’ve had enough cafecito to feel confident making some calls. December is close, the spring 2024 collections have been dissected to death, and the question I keep getting from readers is the same one I keep asking myself: what actually sticks?
So here it is, my honest forecast for the last stretch of 2023 and the year ahead. Some of these predictions are safe. A couple might age badly. That’s the fun of writing them down.
Red Isn’t Done, It’s Just Getting Started
If you’ve scrolled any street style coverage since September, you already know: red is everywhere. Not a polite burgundy. A loud, tomato-adjacent, look-at-me red. Sabato De Sarno built his entire Gucci debut around a shade of it (he even gave it a name, Rosso Ancora), and Ferragamo has been pushing its own fiery version for two seasons now.
My prediction: red tights become the accessory of this winter, and by spring the color migrates from accent to anchor. A red shoe with an otherwise neutral outfit will be the easiest trick in the book through 2024. I’ve already bought mine. Zero regrets.
Quiet Luxury Is Getting Less Quiet
We spent all of 2023 talking about quiet luxury. Succession ended, Sofia Richie got married in head-to-toe beige, and suddenly everyone wanted to dress like they had a trust fund and nothing to prove. The Row became a personality type.
Here’s my take: the stealth-wealth fever breaks in 2024. Not because people stop wanting beautiful basics, but because dressing like wallpaper gets boring fast. The spring 2024 runways already showed the correction. Bows on everything at Simone Rocha and Sandy Liang. Sheer layers that refuse to be invisible. Even the minimalists added wit. If you want to track how the collections compared season to season, Vogue Runway is still the archive I live in.
Quiet luxury taught us about fabric and fit. Good. Now we get to keep the quality and bring the personality back.
The Phoebe Philo Effect Will Shape How We Shop
The single biggest fashion event of this fall wasn’t a runway show. It was a website going live. Phoebe Philo finally launched her own label at the end of October, sold through most of the first edit almost immediately, and reminded everyone why “Philophiles” was ever a word.
What interests me isn’t the clothes alone (though those trousers, my god). It’s the model: no traditional shows, limited drops, prices that demand commitment. I predict more designers test this quieter, direct way of releasing collections in 2024. Fewer products, more intention. Whether the rest of us can afford any of it is a separate conversation, but the influence will trickle down the way Old Céline always did.
Drop Waists, Low Hips, and the Twenties Revival
Spring 2024 had a clear silhouette story: the waistline fell. Miu Miu dropped it, Gucci dropped it, and half the contemporary brands will copy it by March. Skirts slung low on the hips, dresses with that 1920s flapper geometry, everything a little undone.
I have complicated feelings here. Drop waists flatter almost nobody in theory and look fantastic on camera in practice. My prediction is they’ll be huge in editorials and streetwear-adjacent styling, and most of us will adopt the softer version: low-slung maxi skirts with a fitted top. That I can get behind.
Metallics carry us through the holidays in the meantime. Silver specifically. If you buy one party piece this December, make it silver and you’ll still be wearing it next December.
Watch Chloé. Boho Is Coming Back
In October, Chloé named Chemena Kamali as its new creative director, and she doesn’t show until next year. Why does that matter now? Because Kamali worked under Phoebe Philo at Chloé during the label’s blouse-and-lace golden era, and her appointment is the strongest signal yet that the pendulum is swinging from sharp minimalism back toward softness.
Mark this one: 2024 brings a boho revival. Not the 2005 Sienna Miller festival version (please, no), but a cleaner take. Lace blouses, suede, long floaty dresses with actual structure underneath. The Business of Fashion has been tracking the wave of creative director changes all year, and this hire is the one I’d bet money on.
Microtrends Are Burning Out, and Thank God
Tomato girl summer. Coastal grandmother. Whatever “girl dinner” was supposed to mean for clothes. TikTok spent 2023 inventing an aesthetic a week, and I watched smart women I know panic-buy into identities that expired in a month.
The backlash is already here. Every conversation I have lately, with readers, with the designers I sketch for, with my own group chat, circles back to personal style. Capsule thinking. Buying less and meaning it. Even the trend-forecasting world acknowledges the shift; the cycle has gotten so fast that opting out has become the most fashionable move available. Harper’s Bazaar ran some of my favorite writing on this fatigue over the past few months, and the appetite for that conversation tells you where 2024 is headed.
My prediction, and my hope: next year rewards the woman who knows what she likes. Trends become seasoning, not the meal.
What I’m Actually Doing About All This
Forecasts are cheap if you don’t act on them, so here’s my own plan. I’m keeping my quiet-luxury blazers and adding one ridiculous bow. I’m buying red shoes and silver something. I’m not touching a drop waist until I try five on in a fitting room with honest lighting. And I’m saving, slowly, for one beautiful thing in 2024 instead of twelve forgettable ones.
Miami doesn’t really do winter, so while the rest of you layer, I’ll be testing the sheer trend in 80-degree December heat and reporting back. The forecast, like all forecasts, comes with a margin of error. But if I’m right about even half of it, next year is going to be a lot more fun to get dressed for than this one.
And if I’m wrong? Well. There are worse fates than a closet full of red.