5 Key Winter Fashion Trends For 2022, According To An Expert

If you’re a fashion fanatic, you’ll be aware that living in Australia certainly has its pitfalls.

There is one major benefit to this however. When it comes to styling and selecting pieces for the upcoming season, we have the advantage of looking to the recent collections presented at previous fashion months for inspiration.

Chief Buying and Merchandising Officer, Lea Cranfield, and Senior Market Editor, Libby Page, have combined their data driven insights, understanding of consumer trends and expert fashion intuition and have shared their ones to watch with ELLE Australia—the covetable, trendy pieces that you’ll treasure for years.

From the reinvigorated everyday classics to the investment necessities, keep scrolling below for the five trends that will take over this season.

“After several seasons of bold, bright and optimistic colours, this mood signifies the return of fashion’s favourite colour: black”, explained Cranfield over Zoom.

“Black pops off our website like you wouldn’t believe, and it’s the top performing colour to date and our largest ever investment,” she continued.

As Libby and Lea have attested to, the return to black is a shift away from high octane dopamine dressing and a return to something familiar: we are creatures of comfort after all.

“Let’s remove the connotations that black is basic”, Page argued. Designers’ use of black in the FW/22 season meant they couldn’t rest on their laurels: no gimmicks or saturated tones or fanciful textures to hide behind.

But, the designers had two things in common— black maxi dresses and thigh high boots were everywhere.

Don’t let the name fool you, these ‘foundational’ pieces are crucial to any wardrobe, but they’re not how you’d expect them.

Take LOEWE’s skin-tight anagram tank top for instance. Page explained that this piece almost sold out within a week of uploading, and if the buzz around Prada’s logo adorned tank from their FW/22 collection signals anything, we can expect that the tank is not going anywhere soon.

Guided by glamour, the trophy piece is the investment item that will appeal to the glitterati inclined.

The re-emergence of practical dressing saw trophy dressing as the evolution of the optimistic moods that we’ve seen over the past few seasons”, said Cranfield. “There’s a growing traction for evening wear…obviously the pandemic has expedited our need to get glammed up again”, she continued.

Fashion fans will know that the FW/22 season was filled to the brim with embellished ensembles and pieces embroidered with crystals, sequin and diamantes. Thankfully, NET-A-PORTER has stocked their proverbial shelves with over 60 sequined looks straight from the runway. Our next stand-out buy is a mere search away.

Fashion is clear, sheer and here to stay.

The vibe shift is in no way pulling focus from fashion’s fixation with the body, despite what the cool weather may tell you. Of course, our first instinct when it comes to dressing for the freezing cold isn’t to put on a nearly-naked shirt, however the great reveal is more than just wearing lingerie as outerwear.

While we don’t typically tend to associate winter dressing with romance, in fact we’d arguing that cold weather date night attire that aren’t jeans and a nice top is a mission within itself, the FW/22 season was actually more romantic than anticipated.

Not convinced? Well, according to NET-A-PORTER the overall theme of this season is one of love, unity and togetherness. Just look at the runways of Balenciaga, which Cranfield said was dedicated to “fearless resistance and the victory of love and peace”, or Valentino who paraded 40 looks of ‘P.P Pink’.