4 things for fashion and beauty to keep an eye on in 2025

From what’s in store for fashion supply chains to the evolution of fashion tech and beauty consumer trends, we break down everything to have on your radar for the year ahead.

1. The trends defining beauty in 2025.

This year will be steered by the booming wellness category, individuality in makeup and product safety scrutiny.

Longevity is this year’s buzzword as people seek solutions to live longer, ushering in product and tech innovations targeting healthspan, the length of time a person is healthy for within their lifetime.

Beauty giant L’Oréal has already embraced this with its skin age calculator, while Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever lifts the lid on the cultural craze of resisting ageing.

Meanwhile, the weight loss economy (fuelled by Ozempic and other GLP-1s in 2024) is shedding negative connotations, focusing on supporting healthier lifestyles and evolving natural alternatives like supplements and patches.

Here's how brands can get involved.

2. Here's what influencer budgets should look like this year

In 2025, over 50 per cent of brands plan to increase budget spend on creators, according to a study by LTK and Northwestern University. How should they allocate their inflated influencer marketing dollars?

The main thing is that spend is increasing, says James Nord, founder of influencer marketing agency Fohr. “It’s growing and is pushing towards a place of more prominence and centrality in the marketing mix,” he says. “The big thing is scale.” Nord puts a high influencer marketing budget at about 20 per cent of a brand’s marketing spend.

Some brands are planning to go bigger. Here's everything to know.

3. What does fashion's supply chain look like in 2025?

2024 was a year of reckoning for the fashion and luxury goods supply chain.

As luxury brands continued to hike their prices, consumers and critics scrutinised the quality and value of goods and found many lacking.

2025 is poised to be another year of uncertainty, largely due to unresolved tariff issues in several countries, particularly the US.

Meanwhile, the use of artificial intelligence will drive efficiency and personalisation, speed up decision-making and reduce waste by enabling advanced demand forecasting.

Here's what the next year could look like for supply chains.

4. Will fashion tech become more human, and more automated?

Fashion’s pandemic-era tech infatuation has passed, and consumers and companies are once again ready for the human touch.

As generative artificial intelligence is surging and brand budgets are shrinking, this sets up a poignant tension between the automated and the authentic in 2025.

The twist is that big tech companies stand to gain as brands cut startup-driven pilots that are deemed more fantastical or risky.

From real-world wearables to humanity in AI - here's how tech could shape fashion this year.

Elsewhere in the industry this week:

What will happen to TikTok?

How menswear learnt to embrace the internet’s thirst - and what this means for the future of menswear.

How ‘the algorithm’ became a scapegoat for bland style. Madeline Schulz breaks it down.

What happened to Y/Project? Maliha Shaoib unpacks the news of its closure.

Vogue Business Fashion Futures is set to arrive in Dubai during #DubaiFashionWeek this February. Hosted at the Dubai Design District, this exclusive event will explore the intersection of fashion, art, innovation, and investment. An esteemed line-up of thought leaders will discuss strategies for advancing regional sustainability with a culturally nuanced approach. Don't miss out—register your interest here.