How do you sell a skirt to a woman who’s bombarded with advertising from her first social media scroll of the morning to the last flick-through before she goes to sleep? According to the fashion advertising credo of the moment, you make it look good enough to eat.
Fashion is having a love affair with food: from Jacquemus-branded sticks of butter, to fruit and vegetables at Loewe, and photogenic chefs spruiking brands the way models once did, the edible is king. There’s hunger in our eyes, and it’s not just for the newest Alaïa Le Teckel bag colourway, or for a sneak peek of the latest no-phones-allowed The Row show. This is more carnal.
The spring/summer 2025 collections were ripe with food-inspired imagery, from banana-printed silk sets at Jacquemus to fried egg brooches at Moschino and slip dresses decorated with entire table settings at Marco Rambaldi.
Meanwhile, in March, Saint Laurent opened a sushi restaurant at its Rive Droite store in Paris, and beauty mogul Hailey Bieber launched a collaboration with Fila with a campaign featuring her carrying grocery bags overflowing with fresh produce.
Perhaps part of the appeal is how fashion and food can be both mundane and extraordinary: they are everyday necessities, but they can be elevated to the level of beauty, of high craft, of sensory magic. In this way, they are natural compatriots.
Balancing a soft brown blush atop a pillowy toasted marshmallow (à la Rhode) creates a semiotic association that trades on the qualities of the food, and allows the appeal of the marshmallows – soft, sweet, comforting – to imprint on the product itself.
“[The pairing of fashion and food is] like a manifestation of ‘little treat’ culture,” says Elizabeth Goodspeed, a graphic design expert and cultural commentator. “You treat yourself to a pastry, so why not treat yourself to this diamond necklace, too?
“Fashion has always had a complicated relationship with food,” she continues, “and I think we’re seeing that play out in a very striking way right now.” We are finding food everywhere – tempting us, encouraging us to buy the products it’s selling through association – and yet we’re not really supposed to be eating it.
Thinness is back: a quick scan of the runways could legibly lead you to the conclusion that the body diversity push of the 2010s was just a blip rather than evidence of systemic change.
Last year, after the spring/summer 2025 shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris, Vogue Business published its annual size inclusivity report.
It found that only 5.1 per cent of models on runway shows were mid-size or plus-size (AU 10 or above), and an overwhelming 94.9 per cent were straight-size (AU 4-8).
Much of this is being traced to the increased popularity of GLP-1 medications, such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. Usage has skyrocketed since Ozempic went viral in 2022. According to Morgan Stanley, about 7 million Americans are currently taking GLP-1 medications, and that number is predicted to hit 24 million by 2035.
We are seeing real hype continue to build around food culture right now,” says analyst Hannah Allan of WGSN. “It’s crossing over into fashion, as brands look to tap into [food’s] cool currency.”
Instead of playing safely in one lane – say, just fashion, or beauty or homewares – brands are building out entire universes that span culture and allow their customer to buy into a lifestyle. It speaks to our economic moment: a customer might not be able to afford Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche tote, but they can engage with the brand at its sushi restaurant for a fraction of the price.
“Food is a way of approaching the consumer on another level, and another pricepoint,” confirms Goodspeed.
It’s an extension on the elements luxury brands have traditionally relied on (i.e. fragrances and sunglasses) to hook in a would-be customer at an entry-level price. New York-based Saie Beauty recently tapped food to draw more consumers into its world. Last summer, it hosted an ice-cream pop-up to launch new shades of its Glossybounce lip oils.
“Food can be sculptural and evoke both taste and emotion,” says the brand’s founder, Laney Crowell, of the creative direction to combine the edible with the wearable. She saw customers flock to the store, hungry for an experience and to physically be in the same place as others who loved the brand.
“In today’s digital world, where much of what we experience is virtual, food gives us a tangible, sensory connection,” she adds.
There’s a certain playfulness to the way some brands are dabbling in nostalgic, typically unfashionable food. Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand, Rhode, has used sugared doughnuts (fitting, given she’s the pseudo-ambassador for glazed doughnut skin and manicures); Kate Spade partnered with Heinz, putting its tomato sauce bottle branding on bags, shoes and key chains last year; and cult London brand Chopova Lowena’s Margaret bag (named after Margaret Hellman, co-founder of the eponymous mayonnaise brand) features both the condiment jar and spoon holders.
According to Allan, the thrust towards irony and silliness is not an accident. “By choosing childhood food favourites, brands are evoking certain memories and activating what we call ‘glimmers’ – small moments of joy,” she says. “Glimmers are especially important right now.”
Vegetables and produce are also cropping up again and again in fashion – such as Loewe’s beaded asparagus bunch handbag and heirloom tomato clutch – combining luxury with luxury. “Cost of living increases and higher food bills have made fresh produce a luxury item,” notes Allan.
Younger shoppers are increasingly more interested in premium groceries, and allocating
a bigger share of their spending to stores such as Erewhon in LA, which collaborated with Balenciaga on a capsule collection of jerseys, caps and tees and sent its paper grocery bags as accessories down the fashion house’s pre-fall 2024 runway.
Meanwhile, Happier Grocery in New York, with its austere decor and healthy offering of sushi, nut milks and chicly packaged protein bars, has become an address for the
fashion set, recommended in the same breath as an undiscovered consignment store. “The ultimate luxury signifier for this generation is buying a celebrity-endorsed smoothie or fresh, organic produce for their salad,” says Allan.
The intertwining of fashion and food is, at its core, a contradiction: one that mirrors the broader dissonance of an industry that puts on a show of indulgence but ultimately celebrates deprivation. By making food an accessory, fashion reinforces a performative relationship with consumption.
Glazed doughnuts are muses, jelly pots are glossy props, and fruit and vegetables are beautiful in a mise en scène. Food is something to be admired, curated and Instagrammed, but rarely actually eaten.
So, if food is as much a status symbol as a designer handbag, what does that mean for our collective appetite, both literal and aspirational? Perhaps the next shift won’t be a case of more irony or spectacle, but about breaking the cycle of aestheticising indulgence while punishing actual consumption.
A real entwining of fashion and food? Well that would mean fashion embracing bodies that don’t just pose with food, but are allowed to enjoy it without guilt or contradiction. Until then, we remain in a curious paradox, where food is a prop, hunger is aspirational, and
we can wear what we eat – but only so long as we never take a bite.
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