Long summer, Oasis and cost of living dominated 2025 sales trends – John Lewis

The long, hot summer, the Oasis reunion tour and ongoing cost-of-living pressures dominated shopping trends this year, according to John Lewis.

The UK’s warmest summer on record saw the usual spikes of fans, ice cream and outdoor furniture at the department store and its supermarket chain Waitrose but four major heatwaves led to record sales of swimwear as the traditional summer months waned, up 18% in September and 28% in October.

Outdoor cooking kit sales were still soaring in October too, up 42% on the same month in 2024, according to John Lewis’s 12th annual How We Shop, Live And Look report.

The summer also brought Oasis’s long-awaited Live ‘25 41-date reunion tour, setting off a boom in sales of parkas and bucket hats – up 40% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier, the retailer reported.

Baggy trousers, sheer dresses, crop tops and check overshirts drove sales spikes in fashion nostalgia, alongside the return of other 90s-defining acts, including Pulp at Glastonbury and Radiohead, which launched their first tour in seven years.

A “hit” nostalgia seller was a Bluetooth speaker in the shape of a tape cassette, an item that features prominently on the Netflix show Stranger Things, which returned to screens for its fifth and final series in November.

Meanwhile, searches for sewing machines were up 50% on the year before, and a poll by John Lewis of its customers found that just 38% said they would throw out and replace an item of clothing if it became ripped or worn out, and nearly half (46%) said they would patch it up themselves.

Some 29% of those aged 18 to 28 said they frequently wore something more than 30 years old, and eight in 10 said they bought second-hand fashion.

After Waitrose reported a rise in sales of blocks of butter, John Lewis said searches for butter dishes were up 108%.

Jason Billings Cray, gifts buyer at John Lewis, said: “The butter dish is becoming the nation’s new obsession.

“We’ve seen the ‘butter yellow’ trend across fashion, beauty and interiors, and butter boards take over foodie feeds and now this once-humble kitchen staple has firmly entered the spotlight.

“We’ve seen a rise in popularity of other traditional kitchen items too – think teapots, spoon rests and casserole dishes – but the butter dish is the nation’s next obsession.”

Meanwhile, John Lewis stopped selling sous vide machines, finding that “today’s cooks prefer messy generosity over molecular gastronomy”, reflected in searches for the gadget falling by 50% compared to 2024.

It also significantly reduced its stock of men’s skinny jeans, which now make up less than 5% of its total jeans offering, down from 15% in 2019.

Beth Pettet, head of fashion brands at John Lewis, said: “We’ve seen our customers move to a more relaxed fit. It’s also quite an elegant look.”

John Lewis managing director Peter Ruis said: “It’s clear that customers really embraced colour, comfort and fun again – from big garden parties, 90s tunes on repeat or butter dishes making a comeback.”