7 best shots from Fashion Week 2025 (and how to shoot like that)

Fashion Week 2025 reminded every photographer why runway work is equal parts chaos, choreography, and caffeine. Between smoke-filled sets, reflective vinyl, and LED-lit runways that fought every camera’s white balance, this season delivered some of the most visually demanding shows in years.

But beneath the drama was something worth studying — craft. The lighting setups, motion timing, and composition discipline that make these images trend on Vogue Runway are exactly the skills working photographers can bring to their own shoots, whether it’s editorial, lookbooks, or even fast-paced events.

In this roundup, we’ve pulled 7 of the best shots from New York, Milan, Paris, and London Fashion Weeks 2025. Each is chosen for aesthetics, and also for what it teaches. You’ll see how pros handled motion blur, balanced mixed color temperatures, and used anticipation instead of burst spray to catch defining runway moments.

TL;DR — What makes a great fashion week shot

Great runway images come from anticipating motion, controlling mixed light, and building a fast workflow that doesn’t collapse under pressure. What separates a viral Getty frame from another folder of RAWs is the shooter’s ability to anticipate the moment before it happens. Here’s what consistently shows up in great fashion week images:

• The pit is packed with identical lenses, but only the photographers who understand rhythm and choreography catch the split-second when fabric lifts, light hits, and expression aligns.
• Instead of fighting mixed lighting, smart photographers lean into it. Underexpose slightly, protect highlights, and plan to fix color temperature in post. Or even prepare for the trickiest white balance by using a color checker or white balance card
• Compress the background, but don’t force it. Ensure you tell the story and also photograph with a wider lens. The models are not the only subjects, and sometimes, the audience will play a bigger story to the images.
• Use clean angles, and let motion do the storytelling. You can also incorporate some unique approaches to motion by lowering your shutter speed to SHOW the motion of the runway while you show everyone being still. We recommend a shutter speed of around 1/15th for this. 
• Click the moving emotion. Even in fashion’s most rigid walks, there’s emotion—a head turn, a glance, a defiant stride. 
• Workflow speed defines your relevance. Pros covering NYFW are using AI culling tools like Aftershoot to deliver same-day selects without losing sleep. If you’ve created a specific preset from previous runways, create an instant profile from the preset for a quicker way to get those edits done!

We also created a guide on how runway pros manage lighting, focus, and workflow under pressure. Check out our full guide here before you scroll through the season’s best shots.

1. Melitta Baumeister (New York Fashion Week 2025): Shooting motion through smoke

Baumeister’s Spring/Summer 2025 show opened with literal smoke. A hazy runway that turned every stride into a sculptural study, oversized neoprene jackets, and heavy silhouettes that gave photographers strong shapes to carve light around. 

How to shoot it

Keep the shutter speed at 1/250 (800 in a dimly lit room doesn’t make sense, as it would require a very wide open aperture) or faster to freeze drifting smoke without losing contrast. Underexpose by ⅓ stop to keep whites from clipping. If haze is heavy, switch to manual focus because autofocus hunts in low-contrast air. You can also use face detection and continuous autofocus and making it easier for your camera to focus on your subject's face. 

2. Michael Kors (New York Fashion Week 2025): Mastering minimalist runway photography

Kors’ Spring 2025 collection leaned into quiet luxury, featuring earth tones, subtle sheen fabrics, and golden-hour light streaming through the show’s open set. The best frames from this show proved that restraint photographs beautifully. Light, fabric, and gesture beautifully carried the story.

How to shoot it:
Spot-meter for skin tones to avoid blowing out highlights on pale fabrics. Try to keep ISO low (around 400) to preserve tonal gradation. But don’t be afraid to embrace a higher ISO. Don’t forget, a well-exposed high ISO image is always better than a low ISO image that is too dark. Shoot slightly off-center to catch shadow falloff across the model’s face for depth.

3. Bottega Veneta (Milan Fashion Week 2025): Capturing texture in motion

Blazy’s Spring 2025 show traded spectacle for craftsmanship, dresses made of woven leather strands that shimmered like fringe in motion. The collection moved quietly but powerfully, every sway of the material catching the low, cinematic light. The strongest frames from this show focus on texture, patience, and the way movement reveals material.

How to shoot it

Stay at 1/250 to freeze the fringe mid-motion. Shoot slightly off-axis to let runway light skim across the texture.

4. Fendi (Milan Fashion Week 2025): Photographing metallic fabrics and reflections

For Fall 2025, Fendi delivered precision—sculpted silhouettes, metallic knits, and modern utility detailing that caught the light like armor. The show’s cool lighting setup emphasized reflection and contour rather than color. The best photographers here played the geometry game, using those hard lines and shimmering surfaces to sculpt form in-camera.

How to shoot it

Expose for midtones to balance metallic glare, then recover shadows in post.  If you’re using a Sony/Nikon sensor, you’ll be able to recover shadows very easily. Canon tends to do a bit better with Highlights. Angle your lens slightly upward to emphasize vertical lines in tailored silhouettes.

5. Valentino (Paris Fashion Week 2025): Theatrical lighting techniques

Alessandro Michele’s debut for Valentino turned a show into a fever dream, which was staged inside a gender-neutral bathroom drenched in red light. The set was Lynchian, cinematic, and claustrophobic in the best way possible. Every reflection and shadow added tension—haunting, almost horror-film beauty that redefined what “Valentino red” means.

How to shoot it

Forget neutral balance and embrace the red. Shoot manual white balance around 2600 K to preserve tone without neutralizing it. Drop exposure by –⅔ EV to keep reflections from clipping, and use side angles to catch silhouettes against mirrors.

6. Givenchy (Paris Fashion Week 2025): Black-on-Black texture photography

Sarah Burton’s debut at Givenchy brought precision—dark palettes, sculpted cuts, and tactile surfaces that challenge cameras to retain detail. The best runway shots here were about control. Capturing black-on-black texture without losing definition is every fashion photographer’s test in restraint and discipline.

How to shoot it

Expose for highlights, then lift shadows gently in RAW. Keep contrast moderate. If it's too much, you’ll flatten the texture. Use Kelvin 3400–3600 K to balance cool stage LEDs with skin tones. If there are many reflective surfaces, don’t be afraid to get out your circular polarizers to eliminate them.

7. Simone Rocha (London Fashion Week 2025): Embracing creative chaos

Simone Rocha turned the London runway into a fever dream of motion and material. Billowing tulle, pearl appliqués, and props that seemed to fall apart mid-show—all photographed under soft, uneven light. The best shooters leaned into the imperfection, framing the chaos as part of the beauty.

How to shoot it

Use back-button focus to track through the movement, and underexpose slightly to save highlights in reflective fabrics. Keep aperture wide (f/2.8) for dreamy depth. For an even more dreamy look, check out some of the newer lenses released by Sigma lately, like their 135mm 1.4 and 200mm F2.

Fashion Week photography workflow: From capture to delivery

Fashion Week may be glamorous, but behind every flawless runway image is someone who mastered light, motion, and workflow under pressure. 

You’ve already mastered light and motion, now try a workflow built for speed.  Aftershoot’s AI culling and editing help photographers process and deliver runway images before the next show even starts. Try it free for 30 days and see the difference.