The next big thing in fashion? It might just be your coffee order

Fashion has always been about self-expression. The shoes dressing our feet, the bag dangling from our arm, the carefully considered coffee order. Wait, coffee order? Yes, apparently what we're drinking is becoming just as telling as what we're wearing. And while fashion has its seasonal trends, our taste buds seem to be developing a trend cycle of their own.

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Just look at matcha. Once simply a green tea, now practically a personality trait. The 'matcha girlie' has become an aesthetic in her own right, complete with an unmistakable shade of green. "I think that consumers are expressing themselves through the drink brands that they're picking, through the takeaway cup that they're holding when they go out to meet their friends," explains Ro Roos, Oatly's Head of Food and Drinks Experience. "That is how you say, 'This is the drink that I picked, and this is what it says about me.'"

And who better to investigate the future of our drinking habits than Oatly? Taking over a Victorian townhouse-turned-arts space in London's South Kensington, the Swedish oat drink brand transformed the venue into its very own mock embassy. Complete with a Museum of Modern Oats (MOMO, if you will), Diplomats Café and Ministry of Mixed Drinks, the playful takeover marked the unveiling of Oatly's Future of Taste Report 2026 and a fourth lookbook.

Yes, a lookbook. The sort usually reserved for fashion houses to showcase their latest collections, except here, in lieu of clothes, the collection came in the form of drinks. "A lot of our creators have worked in fashion before," Roos explains. "We don't want to do just another recipe book. We want to do something that's interesting, a bit engaging."

Borrowing a page from fashion's playbook, quite literally, Oatly presented 18 recipes inspired by research with drinks experts across 21 countries. Forget your usual oat latte; think olive sour, Goji Mont Blanc and chestnut-infused tea. Suddenly, oat milk feels more like the starting point than simply an addition to a drink.

Of course, fashion and food have long enjoyed a rather flirtatious relationship. From the colour of the season to the ingredient of the moment, both thrive on novelty, nostalgia and the occasional questionable combination. But while fashion's next big thing tends to arrive on the runway, drink trends are increasingly born behind café counters and amplified through our social feeds.

And as anyone familiar with fashion's relentless trend cycle knows, what's everywhere today can be forgotten tomorrow. So how does a drink graduate from a fleeting social media obsession to something with staying power? "We're really trying to focus on and look at the lasting trends," Roos explains. "That's why we ground our trends research in the underlying psychology and social and cultural pressures."

Behind every new flavour combination is a shift in what we want from our drinks. Wellness, curiosity or simply the pleasure of trying something unexpected. After all, experimenting with a new order is a rather accessible way of reinventing yourself, even if only for an afternoon. Meanwhile, the pharmification of drinks is becoming equally desired – why apply your skincare if you can drink it?

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Much like fashion, the experience goes beyond appearances. Texture, temperature and the way flavours come together are becoming just as important as the ingredients themselves. Oatly's report found that 72 per cent of drinks experts believe mouthfeel is becoming as important as flavour. But appearances still matter. "We eat with our eyes, we drink with our eyes," Roos adds. "The way that a drink looks has such a massive impact on how you experience it, how good it even tastes."

And she's not wrong. We've all been handed a glass of wine in a vessel with a stem thicker than our thumb, knowing that however expensive the wine might be, it's about to taste vile. And someone really ought to investigate why an iced coffee tastes infinitely better with a flat lid than a domed one.

Take Oatly's olive sour. An olive-infused beverage made with an oat-based foam might not sound like an obvious crowd-pleaser, but that's precisely the point. With creamy cold foam sitting above a salty, savoury base, it challenges the idea that a drink needs to be sweet to be desirable. "It's so weird, and it's great, and I love a salty, savoury drink," Roos laughs. "You feel like such an adult drinking it."

Elsewhere in Oatly's lookbook, the Goji Mont Blanc pairs iced filter coffee with sweet-tart goji berry syrup and a generous cloud of foam, while the Coconut Pandan Cloud combines espresso, orange blossom and pandan. A convincing case for oat milk's possibilities beyond the morning flat white.

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As for what might follow matcha's reign? Roos has her eye on herbs, botanicals and fermentation, particularly the delicate floral flavours found in East Asian food and drink cultures. "There is a whole flavour universe out there where we can really dive into slightly more kinds of floral, complex flavours," she says, pointing to ingredients such as osmanthus and magnolia as potential future favourites.

By the time Oatly's London Embassy closed its doors, the humble coffee order had undergone quite the makeover. What started as a splash of oat milk has become an exploration of flavour, identity and the increasingly creative ways we express ourselves. And while the fashion crowd might still be debating the next It-bag, the next It-drink could already be waiting behind the café counter. The only question is whether you'll be brave enough to order it.