To usher in the new year, we’re diving head-first into the Amsterdam Fashion Week website archive, revisiting a year that unfolded across both familiar runways and entirely new terrain. From AFW’s ‘Op de Ring’ event in June, which transformed the A10 into a catwalk as part of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary, to the presentations and stories that shaped AFW 2025, the past year offered plenty to look back on. First item on the agenda, look back at our raunchiest runways, most spectacular events and eye-opening interviews. Consider this your front-row pass to the highlights, the collaborations, and the new voices that made the city’s fashion scene hum.
AFW’s Op de Ring united Past Present and Future on a never-seen-before highway catwalk show
A 2025 highlight recap without mentioning the AFW Op de Ring event would be an incomplete one. AFW brought two of the biggest fashion events to Amsterdam, one of them a tribute to the city and its 750th anniversary. With fifteen kilometres of highway closed to traffic, the A10 became the setting for a 75-metre open-air runway. The 60-look presentation united established names and emerging talent around a shared starting point: repurposed Levi’s® denim, used by every designer as a material thread running through the past, present and future of Dutch fashion. Five talents, selected by mentors Borre Akkersdijk, Renée van Wijngaarden and Guillaume Philibert, each offered their own take on Amsterdam’s contrasts, from refinement to rebellion. AFW interviewed Emma van Engelen, Vince Reece Hale, Joone Joonam, River Moojen and Jannah Erdtracht prior to their debut show.
Check out the full recap here.
Ülkühan Akgül brought Spongebob core to the Hollandsche Manege
Ülkühan Akgül made his Amsterdam Fashion Week debut on 4 September at the Hollandsche Manege with Etnisch Profiteren, a collection that unsettled expectations and invited questions about identity, labour, and value. Set within a venue charged with its own history of labour and spectacle, the show questioned who benefits when cultural identity is packaged and consumed. Akgül’s silhouettes carried literal and symbolic weight: LEGO-like armour, spiked foam dresses, shovel-shaped leather pieces and pin-encrusted skirts distorted the body into a site of resistance and discomfort. The debut positioned Akgül as a designer unafraid to challenge aesthetics and power structures, marking one of the most talked-about moments of AFW 2025. Later in the year, Akgül, alongside Batuhan Demir, was awarded the Frans Molenaar Prize 2025, cementing his arrival on the Dutch fashion scene.
Read about Akgül’s debut here.
The Patchwork Family highjacked Paradiso with their raunchiest protest to date
On 1 September, The Patchwork Family didn’t so much stage a show as hijack Paradiso. What followed was forty minutes of organised chaos, with drag, couture, protest and performance collapsing into one sticky, euphoric spectacle. The runway read like a manifesto written at 4am. Lingerie masqueraded as leather, denim morphed into armour, fish appeared where handbags usually live, and nothing stayed polite for long. Designers took turns pushing glamour into absurd territory, serving camp with teeth and satire with sequins. By the time the night tipped into drag and the slogans hit the walls, fashion had fully slipped its leash. A reminder that in 2025, the runway can still behave like a dance floor and a rally in equal measure.
Relive the show here.
Dream Unit gave the most unfiltered interview, courtesy of AFW
In conversation with AFW, Dream Unit founders Teun and Evy looked back on two years of shaping one of Amsterdam’s most relevant fashion spaces. The interview traced a shift from hopeful experiment to stubborn fixture within Amsterdam’s creative ecosystem, touching on the realities of keeping a physical store alive, supporting emerging designers and staying afloat in a changing city. Steering clear of tidy success narratives, they spoke candidly about learning on the job, missteps, compromises and the slow work of building trust. Equal parts self-aware and irreverent, the conversation captured the quiet comedy of building something meaningful while pretending you know what you’re doing.
Find the full interview here.
Lantink’s Junior show at Gaultier divided opinion
Dutch designer Duran Lantink, long an AFW regular, graduated to Paris Fashion Week before taking the helm at Jean Paul Gaultier. His Junior debut stirred the room with inflated marinières, sculptural breastplates and tattooed mesh bodysuits, turning the runway into a rather messy playground for misfits and shapeshifters. Provocative, queer and unflinchingly confrontational, Lantink’s Gaultier was less homage and more upheaval.
Revisit Lantink’s JPG debut here.