E222 | As Leggings Disappear, Who Is Defining Fashion Trends?
Summary
Leggings are moving out of mainstream everyday wear and back into sports and performance use, with external data, platform searches, and diverging brand growth rates all pointing in the same direction. As of Q1 2025, leggings’ share of summer apparel at sportswear brands had fallen from 47% in 2022 to 39%, while global Google search interest was just 40% of its December 2020 peak; Marius’s wide-leg pants were growing nearly 3x faster, while yoga pants maintained roughly 20% annual growth. 齿牙 said social media began filling with comments about being “sick of wearing them” and “aesthetic fatigue” in the second half of 2024. In 2025, both related posts and active searches on Taobao declined, prompting the platform to steer merchant assortments toward “a relaxed feel and a less polished look.”
The rise of loose-fitting pants is more than another silhouette rotation; it reflects consumption shifting from display toward inclusivity, utility, and fewer constraints in an uncertain environment. 齿牙 used the “hemline index” as an analogy: in an upswing, leggings carry confidence, outward expression, and body display; as uncertainty rises, wide-leg pants become a defensive choice because they work across body types, settings, and price points. At a deeper level, body politics are moving from “I want society to scrutinize my body” toward de-sexualization, gender ambiguity, and “I’m just going to be myself.”
Ribbed down jackets becoming Taobao Apparel’s 2025 Top 1 was the result of supply and demand aligning around climate, costs, price bands, social distribution, and product redesign. A warm winter reduced the usefulness of bulky puffer jackets, while higher down prices pushed merchants toward lower fill weights, high-loft materials, and small-batch rapid replenishment. 麻花 noted that most of the top 10 items sat around the RMB100 price band, which she said materially lowered the cost of chasing a trend. The style traded a relatively minor aesthetic flaw—“looking like a tire”—for the more serious consumer pain point of traditional down jackets being too bulky, then used 王一博’s outdoor image to package the look as relaxed.
Platforms have evolved from sales channels into trend infrastructure, intervening as early as 6 months ahead of time across demand signals, product supply, and traffic allocation to amplify a breakout item. Taobao Apparel put ribbed down jackets into its merchant white paper in June, then trained merchants, identified existing inventory, and tagged the trend. In August, the opportunity was distributed through the Qianniu backend as an S-level business opportunity; leading merchants began launching products in September, and the platform pushed the trend into partner channels in late October. 齿牙 rejected the idea that “even what consumers see as fashionable is designed in advance,” defining the platform’s role as discovering, interpreting, and amplifying trends. The mechanism nonetheless shortens the feedback loop from demand to supply.
The side effect of platform amplification is homogenization and shorter product lifecycles, so a brand’s investable moat lies less in chasing every breakout than in processing breakouts through a stable DNA. 齿牙 called this a “sweet burden,” adding that “fast fashion is already getting close to fast food.” 老马 framed the merchandising and design teams as opposing forces—market data versus self-expression—with online teams leaning toward trends and offline teams toward design. Her red line is that classic products cannot be abandoned: “There can be trends, but there also has to be conviction.” 麻花 put it more directly: “It’s fine to be ugly as long as you have your own character, but you can’t follow whatever happens to be hot.”
Algorithms deepen subcultures on one axis while rapidly breaking out products that combine inclusivity, emotional value, and function on another, and male and female consumption paths are beginning to intersect. Platforms may continuously push GORE-TEX and sustainability messaging to outdoor consumers, yet they can also turn Labubu, originally a niche collectible, into a mass IP through its “ugly-cute” appeal, celebrity exposure, and use as an emotional statement on a bag. 齿牙 summarized the shift as “women slowing down in fashion while men accelerate”: women are moving from pleasing others toward comfort and self-expression, while men are expanding from black, white, and gray, plus durable low-maintenance basics, into barbering, aesthetic medicine, and trend consumption. Brands that can express both function and emotion will see their potential audience boundaries widen.
Both guests expect fitted proportions to return in 2026, but not as a replay of old-school leggings at the expense of comfort. 齿牙 believes Baggy Jeans have been popular for 4 or 5 years and may be approaching aesthetic fatigue; slim-leg pants could retain room through the thighs while narrowing at the ankle or using ties to create a harem-pant proportion, and Celine, Dior, Prada, and others have already shown fitted silhouettes on the runway. 老马 also sees smaller cuts and X-shaped tops returning. Both attach conditions: the extent of the comeback remains uncertain, fabrics will likely become more relaxed, and products must “have structure while still feeling relaxed.”
Deep dive
1. Leggings’ Decline Has Moved from Complaints to Measurable Supply-and-Demand Change
麻花 opened with a friend’s complaint that she had “not bought a new pair of pants in 2 years.” She prefers tapered trousers, but at Uniqlo, Adidas, FILA, and even Lululemon in major shopping malls, she saw only loose casual pants. Yoga pants have become the last obvious stronghold of the fitted silhouette.
At the brand level, leggings are not shrinking in absolute terms so much as losing ground dramatically on growth. 老马 said Marius’s yoga pants were still growing roughly 20% annually, but wide-leg pants were growing nearly 3x faster. The “wool yoga pants” that became instant hits when launched in 2019 and 2020 have now yielded to silhouettes with “greater inclusivity.”
齿牙 placed the inflection point in the second half of 2024, when social media began filling with comments such as “sick of Shark Pants” and “yoga-pants aesthetic fatigue.” By the time merchants planned their assortments for the second half of 2025, both related posts and active searches on Taobao were down year over year. The growth wave driven from 2020 to 2023 by 刘畊宏’s workout videos, Pilates, and other influencer-led exercise trends is ending.
2. A Century of Jeans Silhouettes Is Also a History of Social and Cultural Migration
齿牙 began in 1873, when Levi Strauss made oversized, durable bib workwear for gold miners. As Western culture rose from the 1930s through the 1950s, the garment became a straight-leg trouser with room through the seat for riding and movement. Its core value was still durability.
In the 1950s, James Dean turned jeans into a symbol of youthful rebellion in Rebel Without a Cause, while Marilyn Monroe gave the fitted silhouette a sexual charge. After jeans entered mainland China from the 1970s through the 1990s, they also shifted from “eccentric clothing” to a youthful way of breaking the monotony of standardized workwear.
Around 2000, Hedi Slimane established ultra-slim rock menswear through extreme tailoring. 齿牙 also told a story with a clear “might”: after seeing his cuts, Karl Lagerfeld might have lost weight for roughly 13 months to fit into the clothes. Followers became known as “Hedi Boys,” and “thin was the only aesthetic standard.”
From 2010 to 2019, athleisure established the “loose on top, tight on bottom” formula, while hip-hop culture brought back straight-leg and even oversized pants. In the post-pandemic era, comfort expanded into commuting, offices, and travel. Loose pants became the daily foundation, while leggings retreated into sports and professional performance settings.
3. Loose Silhouettes Carry Defensive Consumption and a Transfer of Body Autonomy
齿牙 used the “hemline index” to explain cyclical sentiment: hemlines rise in economic booms, and leggings similarly signal confidence, outward expression, and body display. As uncertainty increases, consumers prioritize utility and value, giving wide-leg pants an advantage because they fit more body types and settings.
The social distinction is sharper. Leggings emphasize the body’s lines, implying an active willingness to accept—or participate in—body discipline. Wide-leg pants obscure lower-body features, combining de-sexualization with gender ambiguity and expressing, “I don’t want too much attention from society.”
齿牙 sees popular culture as the most direct layer of transmission: gold-miner workwear, Western jeans, Hedi Boys, hip-hop, athleisure, and today’s relaxed aesthetic all quickly show up in clothing silhouettes. “Whatever kind of culture is popular at the time immediately maps onto what we wear.”
4. Sneakers, Vibe Style, and Power Suits Show How Quickly Trends Cool
As a sneaker enthusiast, 老马 called 2016 to 2020 the peak of sneakers: new releases rose in price immediately, with the secondary market far above retail. By 2025, the market was near a trough. High-top AJ1s and high-top AJ11s were both “neither hot nor cold,” allowing genuine sneaker fans to buy them cheaply.
Vibe style once had a highly formulaic uniform: a hoodie, baseball jacket, slightly flared straight-leg pants, and distressed oxidized sneakers, with the baseball jacket as the core piece. Because the formula was so explicit, once the heat disappeared, “basically nobody was buying baseball jackets” in recent years.
老马’s own wardrobe also migrated. From 2018 to 2020, roughly 70% of her settings were work-related, and she favored “power” suits with strong shoulder pads and X-shaped cuts that displayed the female silhouette. Over the past 2 years, she has shifted toward outdoor wear and Athflow, layering suits over sweatshirts; her dad shoes and tire shoes now sit unused.
5. Ribbed Down Jackets Rewrote “Tacky” into a 2025 Breakout through Five Variables
齿牙 first gave a climate-and-aesthetic explanation: 2025 was a warm winter, making heavy puffer jackets too hot for most settings in China. Ribbed down jackets were mocked for “looking like tires,” but avoided the problem consumers cared about more—the bulk of traditional down jackets. They used “a relatively minor flaw to compensate for a more widespread negative perception.”
Social distribution supplied the aesthetic translation. Instagram creators and bloggers in Korea and Japan styled the garment with a relaxed feel, and related terms appeared rapidly in the second half of 2025. When 王一博 posted climbing photos wearing an Arc’teryx ribbed down jacket, he connected lightweight down with an outdoor lifestyle.
Cost was the hard supply-side constraint. The conversation described duck- and goose-down prices as having doubled in market terms, and 齿牙 confirmed that prices were still rising when she observed the market in the first half of 2025. The platform therefore advised merchants not to overcommit to high-fill-weight products, but to test demand through small-batch rapid replenishment.
The product was no longer the traditional Uniqlo-style H-shape. Short, wide proportions, fine quilting, dropped shoulders, or waisted cuts improved the silhouette, while high-loft down pursued warmth with less fill. 麻花 also noted that most of the top 10 products sat around the RMB100 price band, which she said lowered buyers’ decision costs. Ribbed down jackets ultimately reached Top 1 on Taobao Apparel’s 2025 annual ranking.
6. The “All-Day Wardrobe” Turns Lightweight Down from an Insulation Layer into a Scenario Asset
老马 used a single day to explain the value of Marius’s “milk-skin” jacket: at 6:30 a.m., it serves as a mid-layer for Pilates; at 9 a.m., it goes under a Max Mara 101801 coat for work; at lunch, it can be worn alone in a shopping mall. Its light weight and packability also solve the problem of where to put a bulky down jacket at a social gathering.
Product iterations track women’s fit pain points closely. Version 1.0 used a nylon body with knitted sleeves, leaving more room for thick upper arms, armpit fat, and the underarm area of fitted coats. Version 2.0 switched to warmer-feeling granular cotton. Version 3.0 replaced the stand collar with a hood, using the hood to soften the appearance of rounded shoulders and a hunched back.
老马 said it was no longer the old “Michelin Man,” but a “Michelin Man that has been redesigned.” She links its multi-way wearability to “long-termism” and the “capsule wardrobe”: only when one product crosses sports, commuting, casual wear, and social settings does low fill weight become more than a cost compromise.
7. Fashion Authority Has Shifted from a Few Elites to a Multi-Source Signal Network
齿牙 defined the print-media era as vertical, top-down communication: magazine editors, members of royal families, and Hollywood stars held the cultural authority. From the 1990s through the millennium, television and portal websites expanded reach, but first-wave Korean pop culture, the Four Heavenly Kings, and supermodels still formed the center of mass fandom.
From 2010 to today, social networks have broken down information barriers, and trend judgments no longer depend on a single authority. Platforms simultaneously monitor professional institutions such as WGSN, POP, and Vogue; creators on Instagram and Xiaohongshu; and what ordinary users actually wear, using multiple dimensions to assess what is trending and what may heat up next.
老马 tracks overseas runways, designers, and creative directors while also studying bloggers in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Korea. The latter are often closer to Chinese consumers in body shape, skin tone, and petite proportions. She sees a blogger’s value not in copying but in “processing it a second time” into distinctive self-expression, because “there is never one fixed formula for styling.”
8. E-Commerce Platforms Create, Translate, Direct, and Capture Trends at Once
At the level of “creating trends,” some terms may be invented from scratch, while others originate in existing overseas concepts and are reworked, such as “Mint Mambo” and “Amber Glow.” Platforms then use traffic distribution, hashtag challenges, runway shows, and celebrity collaborations to put a color or style in front of consumers. 齿牙 specifically noted that these terms “were not thought up by us.”
“Interpreting trends” means lowering the professional barrier. In the past, even users who watched shows or read magazines might not know which elements were worth borrowing. Platforms match abstract concepts to specific products, tags, images, and explanations, turning an aesthetic into a searchable, purchasable group of products.
For merchants, the platform is also “the person who points the way.” Trend white papers are fundamentally B2B tools, telling merchants roughly 6 months in advance which categories might be worth betting on and which suit flexible supply chains, reducing the risk of wrong product development and excess inventory. They may appear consumer-facing on the outside, but internally they function as operating manuals for merchant assortments.
Finally, platforms capture breakouts that vanish almost instantly. A Uniqlo basic could once sell for years; today, a meme or video can make “Monkey Bro pajamas” or “the same sweater vest as 迅哥” go viral. Platforms must help merchants absorb search volume quickly, because “ribbed down jackets may not be hot next year.”
9. Ribbed Down Jackets’ Breakout Was a Platform Operating Chain Launched 6 Months Early
Taobao faced problems at both ends: merchants were launching huge volumes of new products but feared betting on the wrong direction, while consumers struggled to find clothes suited to their bodies, settings, and the current trend within a massive product pool. Trend products help organize supply while improving discovery.
In June 2025, the platform first proposed ribbed down jackets in a white paper and taught merchants how to use the concept. It then used algorithms and product tools to identify the category within existing inventory, apply a trend tag, and explain it, helping consumers understand “what a ribbed down jacket is.”
In August, the platform distributed the tag through the Qianniu business-opportunity backend as a core S-level opportunity. Merchants could submit products to compete for exposure and traffic benefits. Leading merchants began launching in September, and in late October the tag was distributed into partner channels, ultimately producing an on-Taobao data curve that was “rising sharply.”
麻花 asked the key question: “Even what I see as fashionable has been designed in advance?” 齿牙 rejected that explanation, emphasizing that the platform is mainly “discovering trends, then interpreting trends.” But from discovery and naming to organizing supply and traffic, the platform has clearly become an amplifier.
10. Homogenization Is the Platform’s “Sweet Burden”; Brands Can Resist Only through Reprocessing
Asked whether platforms worsen homogenization, 齿牙 admitted directly: “This is the sweet burden facing the fashion industry right now.” Deep participation inevitably accelerates copying and shortens product lifecycles: “Everything tastes more or less the same; after 2 meals, you may have forgotten it.” She believes the backlash against involution will eventually push users back toward quality and individuality.
Marius handles the conflict through its organizational structure. The design team owns attitude, point of view, and self-expression, while the merchandising team above it combines market data with design inspiration. 老马 once played both product manager and recommender—explaining what users needed during the week, then publicly saying a product was “not good enough” on the weekend—before ultimately handing product responsibilities to a professional team.
Her boundary for the brand is clear: trend products are acceptable, but they must be reinterpreted through materials, silhouettes, and styling, while DNA products cannot be abandoned. Online teams are closer to e-commerce fast fashion; offline teams lean more toward design. A true “superbrand” must let users see both trends and conviction.
11. Algorithms Deepen Subcultures while Recombining Audience Boundaries and Gendered Consumption
齿牙 divides the shift into vertical and horizontal movements. Vertically, information cocoons keep deepening: people who like subcultures continue receiving the relevant Icons, while outdoor consumers are pushed GORE-TEX and sustainability messaging. Horizontally, products with broad inclusivity, emotional resonance, and strong functionality can rapidly cross those boundaries.
Labubu is an example of “cross-segment diffusion.” It began as a highly niche collectible IP, but its “ugly-cute” appeal carried emotional value amid social anxiety. Combined with top celebrities, a price that was not especially high at the time, and the ability to express one’s mood by hanging it on a bag, Labubu moved from the collectible-toy circle into the mainstream.
Marius’s strategy is to “hold the line on style while breaking through on audience.” 老马 uses fashion items in traffic acquisition to bring in first-time buyers, then trains them to understand DNA products such as wool yoga pants. Athflow serves as the bridge: sweatshirts attract the sports-and-casual audience, while suits convert them into commuting use cases.
Gender is moving in the opposite direction. Women are shifting from displaying curves toward “disgusting outfits” and “old-fashioned humans preparing for winter,” while men are moving from effortless, versatile, durable basics into barbering, aesthetic medicine, and trend consumption. 老马 cited Bai Xiao T as an example: for men, the pitch is adding down insulation to a T-shirt; for women, it is looking slimmer and taller. 齿牙 summarized it as “women slowing down in fashion while men accelerate,” while 老马 believes that integrating function with emotional expression could expand the boundaries of both menswear and womenswear.
12. Fast Trends Iterate Monthly, Slow Categories Provide Structure, and Longevity Has Three Tests
老马 does not reduce trends to “one change every 5 years.” In online commerce, “there may be some kind of transformation every 5 months.” But brands must preserve a long-term language comparable to Chanel tweed. She wants online supply chains and user experience to move faster, while offline channels distill trends into image, labels, and recognition.
麻花 initially assumed brands would want trends to move more slowly, so that a style would not be over before the pattern was finished. 老马 added that brands are indeed slow, but e-commerce brands must accelerate to match the platform’s pace. Both speeds coexist within the same product structure, while DNA products remain.
齿牙 sees sports and outdoor, American streetwear, and similar evergreen categories as the underlying “slow” classifications. Fast styles are split off, extended, or recombined from them. Combining American streetwear with sports and outdoor can create a new style, but the parent categories that compose it will persist.
To judge whether a trend can last, she offered 3 tests: Would ordinary people still wear it without KOL promotion? After wearing it continuously for 1 week, would they feel aesthetic fatigue or discomfort? Could the entire internet rapidly reproduce it at the lowest price and flood the market with copies? If the third happens, it will not live long.
On the claim that e-commerce brands have weak product capabilities, 齿牙 takes the opposite view: platforms are pushing every e-commerce brand to improve, because merchants must constantly sharpen their competitive edge.
13. Fashion Cycles Are Not Mystical; 2026 May Bring Comfortable Fitted Proportions and New Classicism
齿牙 used Y2K to explain the mechanics of recurrence. Young people who did not experience the original era treat its objects as new; Y2K’s optimism, flamboyance, and fantasy of the future also respond to today’s uncertainty. Brands cannot innovate without a reference point, so they extract the original template from Vintage, add contemporary design, and create the current wave of New Vintage and Archive.
Age is another axis of recurrence. Old-money style attracts both 20-to-30-year-olds and high-spending women over 45, while middle-aged women from 30 to 45 may be less receptive. Camel and red also often trend simultaneously among younger women and their mothers. A “grandmother’s wardrobe” can therefore enter the world of younger consumers, while retired women may once again pursue the self-expression they wanted when they were young.
For 2026, 齿牙’s strongest call is that “fitted proportions will definitely return next year,” though the form and degree remain uncertain. Pants may retain room through the thighs and taper only at the calves, or fitted jeans and leather pants may return in the style of the recently popular CORTIS boy group. Baggy Jeans have been popular for 4 or 5 years, while the runways at Celine, Dior, and Prada are already sending signals in the opposite direction.
Another possible comeback is the Napoleon jacket and courtly aesthetics. After Dior showed the piece for Fall/Winter 2025, Icons including Playboi Carti and 权志龙 began wearing it. 老马 also noted that Demna’s Spring/Summer 2026 at Gucci shifted from oversized silhouettes to fitted proportions after his move there, with “shoulder width reduced from 55 centimeters back to 42 centimeters.” The new fitted look will use more relaxed materials; the goal is not old-fashioned constraint, but to “have structure while still feeling relaxed.”