Best Fashion of 2018
The best-of-2018 guides — handbags, shoes, shopping and fashion news for fashion consumers
The best of fashion is more than just the best clothing. A year in fashion is also its handbags, its shoes, its fashion accessories, the stores that sold them and the news sites that argued about them — so this section reviews all of it for 2018, in four guides.
The four guides are the handbag guide, built around a single extraordinary art collaboration; the shoe guide, five pairs chosen for versatility; the shopping guide, eight online stores mapped by what each one does best; and the news guide, the fashion journalism roster of 2018, from monthly magazines publishing daily to blogs that never printed a page.
The Best of 2018 Guides
Four Guides, One Fashion Year
Each guide answers a different consumer question. The handbag and shoe guides are product guides: named designs, style numbers, dimensions, heel heights and materials — the details that decide whether a piece works in a real wardrobe. The shopping guide maps the stores themselves, from a luxury resale pioneer founded in 1999 to a curated marketplace for independent designers. The news guide maps the reading: where fashion coverage actually lived in 2018.
Taken together, the four guides sketch the consumer fashion landscape of 2018. Art museums collaborated with luxury houses on handbags. A sneaker could be a jewel. Resale had become a first-class way to shop for luxury, sitting on the same list as fast-fashion direct brands. And fashion news had fully escaped the monthly magazine schedule — every title on the news list published online, most of them daily.
How the 2018 Section Compares With Earlier Years
The 2017 section had five guides, including a social sites guide and single-brand spotlights for Valentino, Givenchy and Fendi. The 2018 section is leaner and more concentrated: four guides, each going deeper on fewer subjects. The handbag guide spends its whole length on one bag instead of a dozen; the shopping guide gives each of its eight stores a real profile instead of a line; the news guide replaces the social list with the working fashion press.
The best of 2017 hub remains the natural companion to this page, and the wider best of fashion for consumers collection gathers the consumer guides across years and topics. Many resources from earlier years were still beneficial in 2018, and the year guides are best read as a running series rather than as rivals — start with the year and the category that match what you are looking for.
Best Is a Judgment, Not a Measurement
A word about the word 'best,' because this section uses it on every page. There is no instrument that measures the best handbag or the best shoe of a year: there are favorites, chosen by people with a point of view, defended with details. That is what these guides offer — picks with their evidence attached. The handbag page gives the style number, the dimensions and the lining; the shoe page admits, about its most expensive pick, that it is not sure the shoe is the absolute best of anything, only that it is certainly very expensive and impossible to ignore.
That honesty is the house style of this section, and it is why the guides invite disagreement. The news page says plainly that if you do not agree with its list you should say so, and that your suggestion might make next year's list. A best-of list that cannot be argued with is just an advertisement; these were built as recommendations, open to correction.
A Historical Record of 2018
These pages are kept as a historical 2018 record. The products, store lineups and news rosters describe that year: prices and availability have changed, some stores have since closed, merged or been renamed, and several news sites on the 2018 list have changed their addresses, their owners or their formats since. The brand, store and publication links are the place to check what each one offers today.
We hope that this section helps you find what can become your favorite handbags, shoes, stores and daily reads. Thank you for using the Apparel Search website. Start with whichever guide matches what you are looking for — a bag, a pair of shoes, a store to try, or the news worth reading — and the rest of the section is one click away.
Common Questions
What categories does the best-of-2018 section cover?
Four: handbags (a single art-collaboration spotlight), shoes (five versatile picks), shopping (eight online stores profiled) and fashion news (the magazine, newspaper and digital sites worth reading in 2018).
How is the 2018 section different from 2017?
It is leaner — four guides instead of five — and more concentrated: one bag given a full page instead of a long list, fuller store profiles, and a news guide devoted to the working fashion press rather than social sites.
Are the 2018 lists really the 'best' fashion of the year?
They are favorites, defended with details. There is no measurement for the best bag or shoe of a year, so each guide attaches its evidence — style numbers, dimensions, founding stories — and invites readers to disagree.