Grommet-Embellished Flats Are the Elegant Shoe Trend of 2025

At Who What Wear, we’re constantly dissecting street style snaps for the latest trends, but there’s another secret weapon in our forecasting arsenal: the “new arrivals” sections of our favorite retailers. Recently, we spotted a rising star in the shoe department—grommet-embellished flats—making waves across sites like Net-a-Porter, Zara, Mango, and Nordstrom.

What makes this trend so surprising but intriguing? Grommets were once a humble tool for securing laces, but they have now evolved into a bold design statement. They’ve also long been associated with utilitarian and industrial aesthetics—think grunge and punk—and are being reinvented as high-fashion accents. Alaïa is one label widely recognized for pioneering this shift. In its F/W 16 collection, it showcased grommet-adorned boots, and today, under current creative director Pieter Mulier, it has injected the detail into the brand’s coveted ballet flats.