The cyclical nature of the fashion industry is of news to nobody. We all know that what goes around comes around and that fashion trends have a lifecycle of around 20 years. What this means for 2025 is that those pieces that shaped 2005 — YouTube’s launch year, when Arctic Monkeys released ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’, and when Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s sofa — are ripe for renewal. And this very much includes leggings, and especially the styling choice of styling them under a skirt or dress.
Unlike other trends that altogether disappear between their moments in the sun, leggings haven’t so much gone away as have become big business for those that have embraced the post-pandemic Park Run towards athleisurewear. Choosing a pair of leggings has become commonplace and, whether you love them or loathe them, are among the defining items of this era’s sartorial legacy.
Yet, returning to the idea of layering leggings under a dress or skirt is enough to give any millennial who wore the trend two decades ago a little cause for concern. As with many questionable noughties looks, the pairing feels so utterly nostalgic to our tween or teenage choices that it’s even perhaps incomprehensible that we’d want to attempt it again now. (It’s also worth noting that 2005 came 20 years after 1985, when leggings were also the style du jour – think Madonna’s movie Desperately Seeking Susan. So, despite us thinking we were innovators then, we certainly were not.)
So, just on time, in 2025 a pervasive argument for their return arrives spearheaded by a cohort of designers: all of them millennials, most of them women and presumed wearers of the style pairing back in the mid 2000s.
In her latest lookbook for a collection of pieces sold exclusively at Dover Street Market, Molly Goddard chose to style her voluminous tulle dresses with just-below-the-knee leggings and pointed shoes. The styling choice gives Goddard’s familiar silhouette a refresh that feels at once nostalgic as it does future-facing. It raised my suspicions that a full-blown leggings redux could be bubbling on the horizon. But also, if I was going to try my Molly dresses with leggings, I might just need a little more convincing.
Flicking through the AW25 collections, I quickly found other designers on the same page as Goddard. NY-based Sandy Liang is renowned for her girlish collections that centre around feminine details and sweet colour palettes and she put forward countless looks completed with leggings. Liang’s were styled to be worn under skirts, sometimes clashing, sometimes matching with the patterns of the other pieces. It added to the new route to sportswear she seemed to steer for the season.
Sandy Liang AW25.
Another designer on board is one of my favourite emerging stars: Lucila Safdie. The Central Saint Martins graduate has made leggings — even those with frilled buttocks — a central tenet of her sweet-cute aesthetic. ‘I love them so much because you can have fun with them,’ Safdie tells me. ‘I like that they can be all different colours, prints, sheernesses – they can be worn by themselves or styled in so many ways, like with a dress, skirt or even a pair of shorts on top.’
Lucila Safdie AW25.
For Safdie, the perfect way to wear the look now is with ‘a sheer dress and printed leggings,’ affirming the ideas also put forward by Goddard and Liang. ‘Cuteness!’ she adds.
Of course, cuteness isn’t on everyone’s sartorial agenda. At 16Arlington, Marco Capaldo has given the illusion of leggings a more sophisticated edge through solid black options worn with voluminous eveningwear. Here, they bring a directional edge that is easy to add to any pre-existing wardrobe favourite. It’s these that have perhaps tempted me most as, like many, I can be more inclined to experiment when it comes to what I wear in the evening.
16Arlington AW25.
16Arlington AW25.
The return of leggings might be in its infancy, but with them being so easy-to-wear, easy-to-access and probably already in all of our wardrobes, it’s likely that, 20 (or 40!) years after we first fell in love with them, it might just be time to reconsider them outside of the Pilates class and worn under your favourite dress.
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