2020s Fashion Trends: Busting the Bustles

Breaking down the fashions that will define the current decade can only really begin once enough of it has passed to see the continuing arc. Here, we discuss the upswing of the Barbie uber-femme moment as it starts to bisect the current Forever 31 craze.

It is a dirty secret that most of the "fashion trends" we associate with a particular era emerge in the latter half of the decade. The stereotypical 1950s poodle skirt wasn't introduced en masse until the end of 1952 and didn't reach mass adoption until 1955-1956. The 1960s ended with two iconic staples, neither of which solidified until the middle of the decade: the mod look (1963-66) and the hippie look (1967-69). The stereotypical neon '80s crazy didn't take off until 1984; the grunge and raver looks of the 1990s mirrored the 1960s as mid-decade and late-decade phenomena.

This is all to say that even though the pandemic painfully hobbled 2020s fashion trends, it was always going to be 2024-2025 before we could get a sense of where things were heading. However, if you told me the hip bustle would be one of the two primary staples of this decade back in 2019, I probably would have laughed at you.

To be clear, super femme was already a growing trend, especially in the wake of the success of 2023's Barbie. However, the return of a highly patriarchal political scene (and the elevation of the women who support it) did a real number on the fashion world in 2025. Designers seemed ready for the South to rise again or the Victorian era to return full force. (Don't sleep on the Elizabethan neck ruffles either!)

By the time the Fall-Winter haute couture lines began walking in July, bustles – both hip and butt – were everywhere, as were cinched waists that Scarlett O'Hara would envy.

However, as always, the question is how these trends trickle down to the buyers at Kohl's. After all, no one is going to spend thousands on a dress that's more appropriate for an extra in Carmen.

For that, we turn to September 2025, aka the Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear lines, the first level where the rubber meets the road in the fashion push-pull between art and commerce.

The good news is that the hoops are out of the skirts, though, as you can see, the replacement is ruffles. (Careful! They're ruffled!) Piles and piles of ruffles, which have the unfortunate effect of burying the wearer in fabric and, in some cases, create a front bustle effect, either mid-torso or (worse) at hip level, as demonstrated by Jonathan Anderson's first collection for Dior.

The good news is that this trend, and its histronic overtones, feels like a reaction to the modern moment, much like the endless collections of Dune-inspired post-apocalyptic looks that dominated during the pandemic. While these trends will have downstream effects, the likelihood that the general population will return to the Antebellum South for fashion guidance is low.

But those piles of fabric and heavy, structured designs are in keeping with another significant trend that's emerged in the 2020s, which I like to call the Forever 31 look, thanks to the Saturday Night Live skit. The current maven of the look is designer Phoebe Philo, who is now up to her third set of offerings (Collection C), in which she enrobes every model that walks through the door in entire bolts of fabric. (Though personally, I find the zip-back pants fascinating as a concept.)

The bustle trend probably won't trickle down to Amazon's basic fashion line, but the fullness of the skirts will. Combined with the already oversized, carefully engineered neutrals that have dominated the "fashion forward" conversation and the return of the 1990s phat pant, we're heading into a second half of the decade where secretly structured comfy clothes will envelop us all.