Late Summer’s Shopping Obsessions, Ranked
August pulled shoppers in every direction – Nordstrom’s Anniversary Sale on one end, Copenhagen Fashion Week on the other – and the receipts are in. Drawstring pants, red skirts, fruity fragrances, and exclusive body care sets dominated carts through the final weeks of summer.
The Pants That Outpaced Everything Else
No single product came close to the Free People Something Good Pull-On Barrel Pants in August purchase volume. They were the most-bought item by a significant margin, and the silhouette explains why: a relaxed barrel leg cut with a skinny stripe detail hits the exact overlap between comfort dressing and something that actually looks considered. It’s the kind of piece that earns its closet space in September and stays through January.
Drawstring pants have been gaining ground across street style, with Copenhagen Fashion Week providing a concentrated showcase of how the silhouette works when styled with intention rather than default. The barrel shape, in particular, sits differently than a wide-leg or a jogger – it tapers just enough to avoid looking shapeless while still offering the ease that made athleisure a permanent fixture. Free People’s version added the stripe detail that tips it from loungewear into something you’d actually wear to a lunch or a gallery.
For anyone who tracked down items from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale during August, a number of those finds are still available at reduced prices during the retailer’s fall sale. The window won’t stay open long, but it’s worth a check if specific pieces were missed the first time around. FP Movement has been particularly active in performance-meets-style collaborations, and that same design thinking carries into the Something Good line.
Beyond Free People, the Alex Mill Maya Linen Skirt made consistent appearances in August shopping carts, aligning with the broader red skirt moment that showed up across both celebrity dressing and street-level styling. Linen in late summer isn’t a new idea, but the Maya cut – and the specific red colorway driving purchases – reflects an appetite for something that reads as intentional rather than seasonal filler. A red linen skirt in early fall has different energy than the same piece in July.
Zara’s Fragrance Shelf Is No Longer an Afterthought
Refinery29 Senior Beauty Writer Karina Hoshikawa spent time testing Zara’s fragrance range and published her findings in August – and the response from shoppers was immediate. Two scents in particular drove the bulk of the beauty purchases: a tropical coconut eau de parfum aimed squarely at extending summer’s final weeks, and the Zara Applejuice Eau de Toilette, which leaned into early fall with a crisp, literal interpretation of its name. Both sold well, but the Applejuice EdT carried more sustained momentum.
Zara’s perfume line has historically been overlooked in favor of the brand’s clothing, partly because the fragrance category lacks the visibility of a runway or a street style moment. What Hoshikawa’s review did was close that information gap for readers who assumed Zara’s scents were an afterthought. They’re not. The Applejuice EdT sits in a clean, slightly tart register that works as a transitional scent – not aggressively summery, not yet wrapped in amber and woods.
The timing mattered. August is when shoppers start thinking about fragrance rotation without fully committing to fall. A scent that references apple without announcing autumn gives wearers a way to ease into the seasonal shift. That positioning, whether intentional or incidental on Zara’s part, likely drove the purchase numbers.
Body care sets also featured prominently in August’s beauty spending. Exclusive sets – the kind that bundle products not available individually – tend to perform well during transitional months when shoppers are more willing to experiment with a routine overhaul. August into September is that window, and the data from reader purchases reflects it clearly.
Fruity fragrance as a broader category is worth noting here. The coconut eau de parfum and the Applejuice EdT aren’t outliers – they point to a sustained preference for scents that register as approachable and food-adjacent rather than complex or abstract. It’s a shift that’s been building for a few years across the mass and accessible luxury markets, and Zara’s pricing makes it easy for shoppers to test multiple options without significant financial commitment.
The Viral Hoodie That Kept Showing Up
The Comfrt hoodie landed in August shopping carts with enough frequency to stand alongside the category heavyweights. Viral apparel items are easy to dismiss as short-cycle noise, but a hoodie earning consistent purchase volume in August – when outerwear isn’t yet a practical need – says something about how it’s being styled and perceived. It’s being bought as a wardrobe decision, not a weather response.
What August’s full purchase picture shows is a consumer moving in two directions at once: toward ease and softness in silhouette – barrel pants, drawstring waistbands, oversized hoodies – and toward specificity in fragrance and color. The red skirt moment, the apple-forward EdT, the striped barrel pant: none of these are vague or safe choices. Shoppers are buying comfort in cut and conviction in detail. Whether that tension holds into fall or collapses into a single dominant aesthetic by October is the question no trend report has answered yet.
