Summer Fashion Picks: 6 Stylists Choose Their Top 36 Summer Items, Unveiling Their 2025 Summer Style Boards
As the summer season approaches, fashion editors are curating their mood boards to reflect the latest trends, cultural moods, and aspirational lifestyles. One of the most popular influences this year is the coastal boho aesthetic, which evokes the fantasy of summer by the sea and blends nostalgic elements like '70s bell sleeves with modern boho details.
Inspiration Sources and Mood Board Creation
To create their summer mood boards, fashion editors gather visual inspiration such as images, color swatches, textures, and relevant materials from various sources. These include magazines, social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, and fashion shows. They then curate these elements digitally or physically, organizing them into cohesive groupings by theme, color, or texture that represent the style direction they want to explore.
Digital tools like Adobe Firefly Boards enable editors to upload assets, search stock images, or even generate new visuals via AI, allowing them to remix and refine ideas dynamically for layered, evocative mood boards reflective of the summer mood. The process involves starting with broad inspiration, selecting aligned visuals, and evolving board composition with creative tools to articulate the seasonal aesthetic and editorial vision.
Summer Wardrobe Choices
The editors are gravitating towards airy pieces made of poplin, linen, or crochet, capri pants, silky skirts, pretty flats, and walkable heels, and classic prints such as gingham and polka dots. Bold beads, tennis necklaces, and vintage-inspired stones are popular choices for jewelry.
One editor's main objective this summer is dressing like someone who lives in a stylish city in Europe and walks to the park every day, picking up a loaf of bread and a bottle of natural wine on their way home. Another editor wants to emulate a wardrobe from estate sales and eBay, focusing on bold silhouettes, iconic prints, and an emphasis on polish.
A third editor sees this summer as an opportunity for a return to glamour, leaning into a wardrobe that feels like a modern-day reinterpretation of '60s elegance. Meanwhile, another editor is embracing a softer, more romantic side, moving away from a stark, minimalist wardrobe towards delicate, ethereal, and feminine pieces.
Influences from the Fashion World
Courtside tennis looks at Roland Garros and Wimbledon are ushering classic style back in, often head-to-toe Ralph Lauren. Jonathan Anderson's first ideas at Dior include a self-portrait shoot wearing a logo-embroidered quarter-zip sweatshirt and crisp French blue poplin button-up, capturing a sense of Americana sportswear.
Michael Rider's Celine debut is signaling a shift towards printed silk scarves and colorful knits, while Vittoria Ceretti's recent wedding guest looks are all pulled from the early 2000s. Sabrina Carpenter and the floral wallpaper at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California, are also sources of inspiration for some editors.
As the summer unfolds, fashion editors will continue to draw inspiration from various sources, creating mood boards that reflect their personal style and the season's trends. Whether it's a return to glamour, a softer, more romantic approach, or a nod to the coastal boho aesthetic, each editor's wardrobe will be a unique expression of their vision for the summer season.
In the process of creating summer mood boards, fashion editors also delve into sources that go beyond fashion shows and magazines. They explore home-and-garden trends, such as the floral wallpaper at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California, which adds a touch of vintage elegance to their summer aesthetic. Additionally, the shopping world extends beyond clothing, with editors incorporating elements of lifestyle, fashion-and-beauty, and home-and-garden, enhancing their mood boards with a spring-summer blend of nostalgia and modern trends.
