The 2025 Gen Z Best-Dressed List, According to Our Editors

Gen Z Says is a bimonthly column chronicling the latest trends in the fashion-and-beauty space through the lens of Who What Wear’s own Gen Z editors. Expect a download on the upcoming class of tastemakers, emerging designers, and shopping and style choices straight from the generation setting the trends.

There are years in fashion when the landscape doesn’t just evolve— it tilts. 2025 has been one of them. In an era defined by creative-director musical chairs, an overabundance of fast fashion, and micro-aesthetics that morph faster than we can track, the industry has felt both restless and on the verge of something new. Which is why, when it came time to assemble The 2025 Gen Z Best-Dressed List, I turned to the people who understand this shifting terrain most intuitively: Who What Wear’s Gen Z editors. After all, who better to decode the year’s most era-defining looks than the cohort that can spot an archival John Galliano slip on a TikTok thumbnail at 0.2 seconds?

What emerged from our Slack messages and email threads was a portrait of a new generation of style stars rewriting the red carpet in real time. These are the actors, pop girls, and fashion darlings fearlessly mixing vintage with rising designers, or stepping into the ateliers of Chanel, Miu Miu, and other legacy maisons. They’re working with young, razor-sharp stylists who treat every appearance like a conversation— sometimes a love letter, sometimes a rebellion, but always as a means to make a statement and get attention.

There’s an electricity to Hollywood right now, a feeling that the fashion story is shifting scene by scene, outfit by outfit. It’s fresh, it’s unpredictable, and, frankly, it’s the most fun I’ve had covering red-carpet style in years. If 2025 was the year Gen Z took over, 2026 is shaping up to be the year they set the entire rulebook on fire—beautifully, unapologetically, and in extremely good shoes.

Bella Hadid

Bella Hadid shopping in New York City, January 2025.

“Bella Hadid is Gen Z’s fashion muse, in part thanks to her casual, low-key fits that the model has gone mega viral for over the last few years. While Hadid was largely absent for most of 2025 to focus on her health, the moments the star did pop-up were well worth it—namely, this early 2025 appearance in SoHo in an all-black look complete with Saint Laurent sunglasses and a leather funnel-neck jacket. I personally like Hadid’s style when it’s a bit more casual since it feels more authentic to her, so this look ranks among my top 5 in the year.” — Ana Escalante, associate features editor

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