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South China Morning Post

Neon to the max: Timothée Chalamet's and Zendaya's red carpet looks built on Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling's Barbie brights, and Charli XCX's Brat green, to turn the colour up to 10

If there's one commonality between high fashion and high street that you can't ignore, it would have to be the ever-polarising colour palette that is neon – as much a staple of fast fashion retailers as it is now a designer darling. This past season alone, neon made an appearance on the Tom Ford runway in designer Haider Ackermann's debut for the house, while master colourist Christopher John Rogers, who hadn't staged a show in two years, made his highly anticipated return to New York Fashion Week with several of his signature neon shades. As these two remarkably different brands – each with its own distinctive ethos – demonstrate, neon is back and brighter than ever. Most importantly, neon dressing is now more than ever a powerful statement of self-confidence. Tom Ford womenswear autumn/winter 2025-26. Advertisement There's a reason, after all, why construction workers and traffic cones are typically swathed in a shade of somewhat obnoxiously bright neon orange. The colour is unmissable – the message an unmistakable warning of traffic disruptions, lane closures and even potential danger ahead. Wearing neon colours, however intimidating they may seem, achieves an attention grab to similar effect, without all the negative connotations. Whether used sparingly or slathered head-to-toe, neon announces one's arrival with conviction and stands as a spectrum of individuality – the way you wear it says enough about who you are. But how did neon go from high-visibility workwear to the front row of fashion weeks around the world? Like so many maximalist trends in fashion today, we have the 80s to thank for neon's resurgence. Although neon has been around longer than you may think – Day-Glo, the company founded by Americans Robert and Joseph Switzer, which is credited with inventing and commercialising neon fabrics, first took off during the second world war, when bright fluorescent safety materials were in high demand – it was material girl Madonna , along with Jane Fonda's abs and VHS tapes, who really pushed these colours into the mainstream. Jane Fonda helped make neon brights fashionable in the 1980s. Photo: @immaculate_gem/Instagram Long before athleisure became what we know it to be today, the invention of neon coincided with another consequential fashion finding – stretchy spandex – to create that perfect storm of flashy, form-fitting but no less flexible fashion we now associate with leotards, leggings and leg warmers, which exploded in popularity during the decade thanks to home workout videos and later music videos. Now, all shades of the neon rainbow can be found in modern sportswear and its distant cousin, streetwear, especially as it continues to cross-pollinate with high fashion (see the aforementioned Ackermann's tie-up with athleisure giant Fila, or other high-profile collabs between brands like Off-White and Nike). Neon's been around so long, in fact, that even as some have predicted its demise – 'Are the bright shoes here to stay,' asked The New York Times in 2013, 'or destined to be the acid wash jeans of tomorrow?' – it remains the colour of choice for gym-goers, joggers and athletes everywhere, from suburban streets to the Olympics. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling film a scene for Barbie. Photo: Mega/GC Images Is it any wonder that those behind-the-scenes pictures of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling filming the 2023 blockbuster Barbie – looking like a neon fever dream decked out in 80s-inspired athleisure 'fits – fully broke the internet when they first dropped? 'Nowadays often when we see a resurgence of a specific colour, it relates back to a pop culture moment,' explains Kay Barron, fashion director at Net-a-Porter. 'Along with the sense of nostalgia, there's a fun and youthful association that drives consumers to seek out these colours in their clothing and accessories.' Barron cites the film's Barbiecore pink dressing trend – inspired by the trademark doll's signature outfits – and its somewhat antithetical successor, the slightly off-putting chartreuse-lime shade dubbed 'Brat green' for the 2024 Charli XCX album cover that inspired it, as prime examples of pop culture's influence on consumer choices. Both neon-adjacent colours quickly made their way onto our social media feeds, into the cultural zeitgeist and yes, even into our clothes.