“Aliens have landed” would not be the wildest rumour to proliferate on Planet Fashion but, this season, there’s some truth in extraterrestrial life finally coming for influencers. Just kidding! About the last part, at least. Autumn, so far, has belonged to one special visiting mascot: E.T.
Rumblings from outer space (we’ll stop soon, we promise) started during Milan Fashion Week on Bottega day, when Matthieu Blazy single-handedly set the mood for spring/summer 2025 with a set of animal-shaped bean bags. Watching Jacob Elordi and A$AP Rocky nestle their bottoms on bulging bunnies, chickens and whales was a stroke of genius that tapped into our current appetite for nostalgia. Those plush front-row chairs, it turns out, were inspired by the scene in E.T., when Elliott’s mother opens the little boy’s wardrobe and misses the strange creature hiding within the mountain of cuddly toys.
“I was interested in the idea of wow, the wonder you have as a kid when you try something – it’s almost like primal fashion, your first experience of fashion when you try your parents’ clothes,” Blazy said of harnessing childlike emotions and funnelling them into a collection that included an elevated take on Elliott’s quintessential flannel shirt and some fuzzy hats that any youngster would delight in cuddling. Had you not read the press notes, those luxe check button-ups looked as covetable as Blazy’s famous Bottega denim, which is not actually denim but leather of the finest quality constructed to look like jeans. Who knows what his SS25 take on all-American shirting is actually made of, but you can bet it’s not everyday cotton.
From one ode to E.T. to another more extreme Halloween version – or rather two. The Vogue app enjoyed peak engagement when fright-night queens Heidi Klum and Janelle Monáe faced off in a poll assessing who pulled off their prosthetics best. (You’ll have to log in to find out!) Unbelievably, both 31 October costume enthusiasts decided to dress up as everyone’s favourite extraterrestrial back on 1 November 2023 and spent an entire year – and tens of thousands of dollars – morphing into the wrinkly, bug-eyed Spielberg creation. Their mutual secret? An entire suite of SFX artists (Heidi enlisted the aid of no fewer than 30 professionals to help both her and her husband, Tom Kaulitz, win best dressed at her annual Heidiween party).
“I knew I wanted to do something nostalgic,” Klum told Vogue. “I started going down memory lane, thinking about which dolls I played with, what movies I watched, and what some of my favourite childhood memories were.” The model stumbled upon a mini figurine of E.T., and remembered how the classic ’80s character had helped her “to dream and imagine the possibility of life beyond Earth”.
Monáe, too, said: “E.T. has lurked in my mind since I was a baby. This movie always leaves me in tears. The bond Elliott and E.T. had was a display of the best parts of us – pure love and allyship. We need more of that. I’m always praying we can all impact each others’ lives like they did each others’.”
Any saccharine romance had to take a backseat while The Work was carried out. We’ll save you the detailed run-through of the layers of Latex and Spandex (read all about that here and here), but just know that it took Klum seven hours to get into costume (“I meditate a little to keep calm, and I remind myself that the outcome is worth it,” said the model), while Monáe lost count somewhere between the four- and the 12-hour mark. (“I’m happy to stay locked into character and deal with my bouts of claustrophobia,” she shared.) E.T., it turns out, is no joke.
While we’re in no way suggesting you suit up and start learning lines (thankfully E.T. didn’t have many), there’s something kind of sweet and schmaltzy about a make-believe character finding its way back into the mainstream during a time of year that’s all about celebration. “I think the reason we all left [the Bottega show] so jazzed is because it gave us back the feeling that propelled many of us into fashion as young people in the first place – wow is right,” said Nicole Phelps in her Vogue Runway review.
Yes, this article is silly in its comparison of an industry tastemaker’s craft and Halloween costumes, but sometimes, when the news cycle feels like it could implode at any moment, a little silliness goes a long way. “Perhaps it’s because the desire to leave the planet has never been collectively higher,” said one colleague when I posited E.T. as the unexpected muse of the season. Escapism, in any form, never looked more inviting.
Spring/summer 2025 is all about a great flannel shirt rooted in storytelling, the quiet joy of wearing an anorak with a party dress, the prospect of balletomania returning, and the weird and wonderful world of heeled flip-flops (to shout out just a few of the stand-out trends.) Honestly, after seasons of seriousness pegged to quiet luxury, we couldn’t be more thrilled about this injection of eclecticism. If you’re not then I suggest you – in the (almost) words of fashion’s favourite alien – stay home.
