Why Is Everyone Wearing Highlighter Neon Again?
From rave to runway, the shade everyone swore off is fully back in rotation, and the small brands saw it coming.
If you’ve been on the internet at all this year, you will have seen some iteration of an icy, aqua-colored blue featured on most fashion influencers’ feeds. The shade was perhaps the start of a whole neon revival, helmed by indie It-girl brands, running from fluorescent pink to highlighter yellow.
Just a few years ago, most people wouldn’t be caught dead in these eye-watering shades, a horrible reminder of some of the fashion faux pas we associate with the early 2010s, right alongside mustache prints. But with the unexpected return of jelly shoes and wedge sneakers, we can’t really be surprised that neon was Gen Z’s next victim.
As is often the case with trends, small, indie brands have been the early adopters, finding new ways to fold the hues into designs that actually fit our 2026 wardrobes. TikTok’s fashion girls have been sporting everything from Nii HAi and Fruity Booty to Gimaguas, Blanch, Other Normal and 2001odyssey. You may have spotted Nii HAi’s wedge shoes or Gimaguas’ candy-bright pumps. So why now?
Rosie Williams, founder of Nii HAi, shared with Hypebae, “Trends have been quite muted, and people want to have fun again with their clothes. I personally really like the combination of muted greys and whites, but with a little pop of neon. I think that’s a natural progression from trends over the past few years.”
Williams added, “I also think social media plays a huge role in accelerating trends. Bright colors naturally grab your attention as you’re scrolling, and in a world where we’re all competing for milliseconds of attention, they really stand out. That visibility helps them gain traction much faster.”
Tracing the trend back, neon was a huge part of early ’90s rave culture, tied to hedonism, nightlife and a sense of freedom. Luxury houses soon tapped into the subculture. Versace famously brought the blinding hues to power suiting in SS96 and FW97, working highlighter green, electric blue and high-vis yellow into sharp tailoring. Mugler and Vivienne Westwood joined in and, perhaps most surprisingly, so did Prada. With the 1997 launch of Prada Sport, the brand released striking hues stamped with its iconic red-stripe logo, and just like that, neon became high fashion.
Fast forward to today, and the runways are proving neon never really left. Marc Jacobs’ SS27 show was one of the designer’s most kaleidoscopic outings yet, a four-minute, 31-look sprint through PVC tank tops, croc miniskirts and saturated tights in neon yellow, royal purple and fire-engine red, colorblocked from the clothes right down to the legs. It’s the kind of clashing, maximalist palette that’s since flooded fashion editorials and street style feeds alike. Even Jacquemus, usually devoted to a soft palette, has been dabbling in the same candy-colored family of blues, pinks and yellows that indie labels have been loving, proof the trend has legs well beyond the TikTok girlies.
Vintage handbags are catching the wave too. Resale platforms have seen a noticeable uptick in interest around early-2000s Balenciaga City Bags in neon colorways, with fluorescent yellows and pinks fetching a premium over their more muted counterparts. Just a few years ago, it would be the other way around, with garish colors sitting unsold and slashed to much lower price tags than neutrals. Collectors are now chasing the era of loud, in-your-face color that’s back in favor.
The forecasters saw it coming. WGSN and Coloro, the trend-forecasting duo whose color calls filter down into everything from fast fashion to beauty packaging, named “Neon Flare” one of their five Key Colors for FW25, explicitly linking its return to Gen Z’s rave-culture revival and a broader cultural hunger for urgency. They doubled down for SS26 with “Electric Fuchsia,” a vivid, kinetic neon pink-purple described as tapping into a trippy, psychedelic, digital-age escapism, alongside a fresh, neon-adjacent “Jelly Mint.” In other words, the indie brands were early, but they weren’t alone; the industry’s biggest forecasting engines were clocking the same shift.
Curiously, Pantone’s Color of the Year hasn’t followed the same script. For 2026, the color authority went in the opposite direction entirely, naming “Cloud Dancer,” a soft white, as its pick, framing it as a calming antidote to an overstimulated, chaotic world. It’s a reminder that fashion doesn’t move as one bloc: while Pantone’s institutional read is craving quiet, many of the runways, resale markets and social media feeds are telling a louder story. That tension is arguably part of what makes neon feel so charged right now; it’s a rebellion against the “quiet luxury” mood as much as it’s a trend in its own right.
So why now, exactly? Part of it is cyclical nostalgia, the 20-to-30-year trend cycle catching up to the Y2K and early-2010s references that are already everywhere. Part of it is the forecasting data backing that instinct up. And part of it is simply a mood: after years of beige minimalism, there’s an appetite for clothes that feel a little louder, a little more fun, a little less serious. Neon, with its rave-born, rule-breaking DNA, fits that appetite perfectly.
Whether it’s a lime green lace bra, an icy blue wedge sandal or a fluorescent yellow bag slung over your shoulder, the message is the same: subtlety is out, and the small brands who never stopped believing in color are having their moment.
