Aquamarine showed up everywhere this year, and not in the usual half-hearted “trend color” way where one brand does it and everyone else ignores it. Fendi, Valentino, Prada, Dior, Burberry, and Emporio Armani all leaned into the shade for spring and summer, described consistently as sitting somewhere between tropical ocean blue and sea glass, with a beachy, slightly nostalgic energy that’s been compared to millennial mint’s more grown-up cousin. It made it to the red carpet too, Kate Hudson wore a strapless, bejeweled aquamarine gown with a peplum waist at the Oscars, which is about as high-profile as a color trend gets.
My honest take: I genuinely enjoyed this one, all season, without the usual trend fatigue that sets in by August.
Part of why it worked for me is that aquamarine is unusually forgiving as a color. It reads as fresh against a range of skin tones because it sits right at the point where blue and green balance each other out, cool enough to feel crisp, warm enough not to wash anyone out the way a true icy blue can. Paired with gold jewelry, it does something genuinely pretty, a kind of sunset-over-water contrast that photographs well and looks intentional rather than accidental.
The specific pieces I kept coming back to all season were, unexpectedly, from Los Angeles Apparel. Their garment-dye tube top in aquamarine has been one of my most-worn pieces of the summer, the kind of simple, well-cut basic that lets the color do all the talking without needing a print or a silhouette to compete with it. The sporty baby rib crop tank in the same shade was a close second, easy to layer under something or wear alone with high-waisted bottoms. There’s something about LA Apparel’s garment-dye finish specifically that gives the color a slightly muted, lived-in quality rather than the flat, almost plastic-y aquamarine you get from a lot of fast fashion versions, and that softness makes it easier to wear more than once a week without it starting to feel like a costume.
I’d wear this color again next summer without hesitation, and honestly I already have pieces in rotation that I don’t plan on retiring just because the trend cycle moves on. Some colors are trends. This one felt more like a genuinely good addition to a wardrobe that happened to also be trending, which is the best version of any color moment.