Copenhagen SS27's data points to one thing: colour is back, neutrals are out

Quiet luxury has been one of the strongest movements in fashion over the past few years, not so much as a trend, but as a statement. Fashion asked its audience to go logo-less, traditionally wealthy families became aspirational, the kind of dressing Succession made famous, and beige became the movement's signature colour. Brands like Loro Piana and The Row are its clearest symbols. But lately, that grip has been fading, and this year is the proof: consumers are moving toward something else where colour is the season's protagonist.

The colour has evidence

Based on The Data Fashion Brief's analysis of Copenhagen Fashion Week SS27, the runway confirms the shift. Blue and pink alone made up 20 percent of Copenhagen's season-wide colour palette, on top of shades of green and dark yellow. One of the biggest brands, Marimekko, built its collection around blue, white, pink and red, with a smaller green accent and no black anywhere in its top shades; Stine Goya put 17 percent of its own output in green against a 4 percent season average; and Caro Editions leaned into pink, white and blue as its own protagonists. What they all had in common was the return to colour, individual styling, textured looks and a form of expressionism that quiet luxury lacks.

*Methodology: The Data Fashion Brief buil an AI-assisted tool that scans every look from the Copenhagen Fashion Week SS27 collections and tags it by garment type, fit, fabric, colour. Each trend is measured two ways: how dominant it is within a single designer's own collection, and how present it is across the whole season. The houses covered: Marimekko, Anne Sofie Madsen, Freya Dalsjø, MKDT Studio, Paolina Russo, by Malene Birger, Stine Goya, Baum und Pferdgarten, Nicklas Skovgaard, Collina Strada and Caro Editions.

Copenhagen matters here because it's the first of the season's major fashion weeks, ahead of New York, London, Milan and Paris in September, and the industry treats it as an early read on where the rest of them are heading. This time, that read was confirmed immediately, but the shift started earlier in 2026.

Jacquemus built its Spring/Summer 2027 show, "Le Bonheur", around turquoise and orange as its two signature hues. Louis Vuitton's Cruise 2027 collection, unveiled in New York in May, leaned into saturated colour throughout, royal blue, colourful tweeds and graphic pops pulled from Keith Haring's archive. Orange also flooded New York City this summer as the Knicks made their championship run, one of the team's two colours turning up on jackets and jerseys.

Search backs both colours independently. Worldwide interest in "orange" is up 16 percent on average over the past year, according to The Data Fashion Brief's analysis, peaking in May, the same window as the Knicks run and the Louis Vuitton show. "Turquoise" is up 45 percent on average, peaking in February, around Jacquemus territory.

A closer look at quiet luxury’s actual customer

Who's actually buying splits into two very different stories. The customer choosing Loro Piana, Brunello Cucinelli or The Row was never after neutrals, or aspirational wealth. They were buying the brands regardless of what was trending. It's the aspirational customer, the one who adopted beige as a performance of wealth, who's walking away, worn out by neutrals after several years of them.

The numbers also split in a similar direction. Loro Piana posted double-digit growth through 2026 even as LVMH's broader fashion and leather goods division softened. Brunello Cucinelli's first half revenue rose 9.5 percent reported, 13.3 percent at constant currency. Kering, by contrast, only just returned to growth in H1 2026, up 1 percent on a comparable basis after twelve straight quarters of decline. On top of that, worldwide search interest in "quiet luxury" tells the aesthetic's story: it hit its high for the year in May, then slid all summer, and by mid-August was running below where it stood the same week last year. The fact that several independent signals, earnings and search both, point the same way gives confidence there's a correlation here. Still, it's a signal, not a verdict, one season of earnings and a few months of search data isn't enough to call a permanent shift, but the direction is consistent everywhere it's been checked so far.

Colour is filling the space that beige as a symbol leaves behind, not replacing what quiet luxury actually offered. It's also a pattern with precedent: colour has historically resurfaced in fashion during unstable periods, the maximalism that followed the 2008 financial crisis is the closest comparison, and this year's economic and geopolitical strain fits the same read

What this means for brands and retailers

Copenhagen set the tone for the season's emerging and smaller labels, but the bigger houses are leaning the same way independently: Louis Vuitton's Cruise 2027 and Jacquemus's Spring/Summer 2027 both went bold on colour months before Copenhagen showed a single look, so it's happening at both ends of the market at once.

Expect consumers to move away from the summery palette, bright turquoise and orange, and into pink, dusty blues, and more grown-up greens and yellows. However, the real test comes in September, when New York, London, Milan and Paris show and either confirm the shift at scale or reveal it was never more than a handful of early bets. For now, the direction is the same everywhere it's been checked.