The spring/summer 2026 collections signalled an industry-wide shake-up. Sizzling debuts at some of the industry’s most storied houses (Chanel, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta, to name but a few) captured the energetic new mood, but nowhere was it more apparent than in the skirt department. Movement is very much the name of the game this season, whether in the form of dynamic textures, explosive silhouettes or undulating hemlines. What Vogue is calling the “personality skirt” is becoming one of the spring’s biggest trends.
Take Louise Trotter’s Bottega Veneta debut, which featured swirling, anemone-like skirts made from recycled fibreglass fabrics that, in Trotter’s words, had “the feeling of fur” but moved “like glass”. Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel debut, meanwhile, was alive with befeathered floor-sweeping skirts, dancing flamenco ruffles and tactile fringing. Pierpaolo Piccioli’s colourful debut for Balenciaga, which paid homage to the codes on which the house was founded, featured low-rise skirts that fluttered with feathering and metallic fringe.
Lively hemlines were a common theme across the spectrum. We saw the waterfall skirt – aka 2026’s polished spin on the Y2K handkerchief skirt – on the Alaïa runway, characterised by cascading layers and high-low hemlines. The gravity-defying proportions and fluffed-up hemlines of bubble skirts are also staying put for next season, with Prada providing inspiration in the form of taffeta bubble-gum pink and lime-green crumpled skirts, styled with utility jackets and sleek pointed-toe heels.
Speaking of colour, we’re witnessing the unexpected revival of 2010s-coded turquoise, thanks to the saturated styles sent down the Dries Van Noten and Fendi runways. This take has nothing to do with the polyester babydoll dresses you wore in your youth (just me?), this is all about colour-blocking separates that would look just as good at a beach bar as they do in the office.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
