We spent a week photographing (fictional) commuters in five cities. Comfort won. From train platforms in Chicago to coffee lines in Seattle, from the sidewalks of Brooklyn to the crosswalks of Austin and the steep hills of San Francisco, the same idea kept showing up in our viewfinder. People still want to look good. They just refuse to be uncomfortable doing it. The runway may still love a towering heel and a corseted waist, but the street has made its decision, and it is wearing flat shoes.
Our team shot more than four hundred looks over five weekdays, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., and then sorted them by silhouette, color and footwear. What follows is not a forecast. It is a report on what real people, on their way to real jobs, chose to put on this fall.
The big trend
Relaxed tailoring: wide trousers, roomy blazers and flat shoes. If one look defined the week, it was a pair of wide-leg trousers with a pressed crease, worn with a blazer cut a size larger than you might expect, and finished with loafers or clean leather sneakers. It reads as polished from across the street, yet it moves like loungewear.