“Let's Play Dress-Up.” Menswear 2025: Playful Nostalgia -

Stay on trend with the new retro menswear, and dive into the new collections on the runway for spring 2025. View an assembly of knits, cartoon designs, and oversized clothing… which can never be too baggy!

Nostalgia defining 2025 trends

When is a bag not a bag? Never… We have seen fashion in a whole new light, where fashionable takes over practicality. From tiny bags in 2022, like Jacquemus, to 2025, where we explore the idea of, Is it real or is it a bag? With Bottega’s humorous orange-styled accessory that unfolds into slices. This parody-based item holds a power over fashion in 2025, showing an unserious tone, changing how we will see styling and fashion as a whole in the new year. Mattiew Blazy stated to “Dazed” that this collection releases a child’s view on the world, that “we are not so bound by regular expectations and conventions”, and that the “ door is open to the possibility of strange realities and wonder,” In a marketing perspective, it’s a powerful pull to us as consumers, taking over our minds and convincing us that this trend will solve all our problems by changing our perspective of the world, as well as solving our daily obstacles.

What is the playful nostalgia trend in menswear?

With well-loved designers like Matthiew Blazy, Miuccia Prada, and Adrian Appiolaza of Moschino. Menswear takes a turn, with collections bursting with pastel colours and polished suits. When diving into the styling of Bottega’s ss2025 collection, we see models wearing oversized suits with excessively long sleeves and trousers that sit under the shoe. This use of styling brings back memories to us as viewers of when we would rummage through our parents’ wardrobes’, pulling out their clothing that was too big for us, pretending to be older. It brings to us the realisation that when we were younger, all we wanted was to be a grown-up. When, in reality now, all we want to be is a child, with little to no responsibilities.

We also have witnessed Miuccia Prada take part in playful nostalgia for menswear with their ss2025 collection, featuring fitted knit cardigans covered in bright colours: light greens, reds, and yellows. These colours Layered over complementary patterned shirts, projects characteristics of past trends like the preppy styles and grandad core. It follows a story of us as children being dressed by our parents to look sophisticated while projecting our youth with playful patterns and colours. This collection further stays modern and up to date with retro-reflective sunglasses. This clash of styles supports the statement of keeping the world simple and making our problematic views on the world go quieter. With a mixture of today’s fashion and our past fashion as children, we are telling society that we can see the world just like we did when we were kids.

Adrian Appiolaza of Moschino’s 2025 spring/summer collections follows a similar aesthetic to Bottega’s ss2025 collection, with models walking the runway in oversized corporate suits. Pradas also use a similar humorous take with cartoonish details like a fried egg over a blazer pocket and unusual trouser shorts that are covered in shirt colours. The irony of this unrealistic design brings simplicity to how much we overthink as adults. When it comes to what we wear, it is accepted in society overall, giving us peace in understanding. The cartoon detailing takes us back to those happy memories and humours us as an audience.

In this collection we see a suit that’s covered in stationery, where the blazer plays the role of a bag or a pencil case. This clothing piece signifies how unhinged we were as kids, when we would make things simple yet harder for ourselves with simple “not caring.” This blazer not only plays the part of a bag but also us as teenagers, where we care as little as possible but then care the most about things that we saw were important to us and us only.