Fashion collaborations are nothing new, but 2025 felt like a year particularly stuffed with branding matchups.

There’s a reason why this might be happening. “Online platforms have become crowded, [there are] rapidly accelerating trend cycles, [and] it’s become more challenging than ever for brands to stand out,” Cassandra Napoli, a head culture forecaster at WGSN, says. Collaborations continue to be a unique and important tool for marketing and maintaining cultural relevance. The best lead to attention-grabbing virality, as was the case with Nike x Skims’ first drop, Sandy Liang x Gap, and Willy Chavarria x Adidas.

“Collaborations have become so important because brands have a need to attract new cohorts of communities and consumers . . . as well as provide a new expression of brand DNA and satisfy many customers’ need for newness,” Gemma D’Auria, global leader of apparel, fashion, and luxury at McKinsey, tells Fast Company. 

But the truth is fashion has become inundated with collabs, and the net result of so much noise has ultimately had the opposite effect: We’re numb to them. A collaboration alone is no longer enough to excite. To sell, they’ll have to resonate with a brand’s core audience, while also tapping into culture and surprising consumers with something new. 

What brands could break the internet together? Insiders reveal their blue-sky collaboration ideas for 2026.

Gap has been on a roll. The American fashion brand not only wooed shoppers this year with the aforementioned Sandy Liang drop, but its denim campaign with Katseye went viral for good reason: an incredible campaign spot that called back to its Y2K days with rising talent and fresh choreo (unlike the controversy-laden American Eagle “good jeans” mess that........

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