Fashion’s Trend Cycle Has Collapsed: Here’s Why I Already Want Gucci’s Furry Mules Back

Never in a million years did I think I’d be longing - actually pining - to climb back onto a bandwagon I once watched barrel past, but here we are: I want the Gucci Princetown mules again. Yes, those ridiculous, sublime, backless loaferswith a furry trim. The ones that, for a few delirious years between 2015 and 2019, shod the feet of anyone with even half a claim to knowing what fashion was.

At the time, there wasn’t a shoe I could have wanted more, but unlike my peers - who snapped them up like they were boarding passes to Alessandro Michele’s new Gucci - I hesitated. Now, absurdly, I’m circling back. They’re on my mood board. My wish list. Lodged at the front of my mind.

Let’s pause and remember their genesis. The Princetown slipper made its debut in Michele’s first Gucci collectionfor Autumn/Winter ‘15 - a men’s show that, in retrospect, detonated a cultural bomb. It wasn’t just a shoe, but a manifesto. The loafer, made louche, decadent and kind of foolish courtesy of the furry lining, was precisely the provocation Michele excelled at. Vogue dubbed it the shoe of the season, and in no time it was everywhere: sidewalks, front rows, fake market stalls and Instagram grids. It became shorthand for Michele’s Gucci, and, then, inevitably, came the backlash. After years of fabulous embroidery, clashing prints, it bags, feverish ‘70s dreams, logo belts, Harry Styles (actually, we could never get enough of that) and Gucci collaborations, fashion fatigue set in, caused by suffocating ubiquity. The slippers slunk off into storage - but that’s just the nature of fashion.

But in 2025, I feel the itch again. Why? Perhaps because furry footwear is no longer a gimmick. Phoebe Philo toyed with it at Céline. Michele himself went further and dreamt up full Yeti hooves. Molly Goddard conjured super-hairy Uggs, and Birkenstock 1774’s shearling Bostons became pandemic-era uniforms. What once read as absurd now reads as foundational. Returning to the Princetown feels like going back to the urtext. And crucially, their silhouette aligns uncannily with now: the ultra-flat almond toe, sitting discreetly beneath the sweep of today’s wide-legged, tailored trousers. In 2015, they fought with culottes and skinny jeans, in 2025, they dissolve into the trouser leg with an elegance almost monastic. Wear with a black wool shirt and black tailored slacks, Gucci Princetowns peeking out like a sly punchline. Perfect.

And I’m not alone. Maybe it’s impending excitement for Demna’s new vision for Gucci, but they’ve cropped up in conversations with friends, not just editors, which means the hum of resurgence is getting louder. You can still find them on Gucci’s website if you’d rather not trawl resale platforms for worn-out soles. Ditto for the non-furry version, they’re equally as delicious.

But what really unsettles me is this: the time-lag of the trend cycle has collapsed so violently, we’re now mining the mid-to-late 2010s. Not the ‘90s, but 2017. Fashion, always self-devouring, now seems positively cannibalistic, and soon we’ll be heralding the triumphant return of looks we only abandoned last year.

Still, the Princetowns make sense. They were a best-seller for a reason. Fickle as fashion may be, it’s also forgiving, and when the timing is right, even the most derided tropes can regain their sheen. And so, this fashion month, I’ll slip back into the furry stomper. Because sometimes the joke ages better than the punchline.

Shop: The Gucci Princetown

Henrik Lischke is the senior fashion news and features editor at Grazia. Prior to that, he worked at British Vogue, and was junior fashion editor at The Sunday Times Style.