New York reclaimed its throne as the world’s most electrifying fashion capital last week, as designers across the city unveiled Fall/Winter 2026 collections that felt equal parts urgent and indulgent. The shows — sprawling across venues from Chelsea to the Meatpacking District — delivered a seasonal wardrobe reset that blended sharp nostalgia with forward-thinking silhouettes. Street style photographers scrambled to keep up. Social media did the rest.
What emerged from the chaos of back-to-back runway presentations was a surprisingly cohesive vision: fashion that demands to be felt, not just seen. From meticulously sculptural brooches to the wonderfully undone energy of indie sleaze, the Fall/Winter 2026 season is shaping up to be one of the most culturally loaded in recent memory. Here are the trends that are already making the leap from runway to reality.
Brooches Are Back — and Bolder Than Ever
Among the season’s most surprising accessories, the brooch staged a full-scale comeback. Carolina Herrera, Tory Burch, and Cult Gaia each presented their own modern reinterpretations of the vintage staple, offering everything from metal sculptural forms to cascading crystal compositions and dimensional floral designs. These are not your grandmother’s lapel pins. Worn on heavy wool coats or chunky knitwear, a well-placed brooch can transform a utilitarian winter layer into something genuinely memorable. The message from the runways was clear: ornamentation is not excess — it’s intention.
Animal Prints Find New Territory
The animal print has long occupied a permanent corner of the fashion conversation, but this season, designers pushed the genre into bolder, more eclectic territory. Anna Sui, Ralph Lauren, and Ulla Johnson anchored their collections in classic cheetah and leopard, while Kim Shui and Markarian introduced tiger-stripe variations with a more editorial edge. Bronx and Banco leaned into zebra-print accessories, and Alix of Bohemia brought an almost storybook whimsy to the category through illustrated animal motifs. The takeaway: animal print is no longer a single-note choice. It’s a spectrum — and there’s an entry point for every wardrobe.
The Indie Sleaze Runway Revival
If the Fall/Winter 2026 season has a defining mood, it might be this: beautifully disheveled. The grunge and indie sleaze aesthetic — rooted in the ’90s and early 2000s — swept through multiple collections with a conviction that felt less like nostalgia and more like reckoning. Collina Strada and 7 For All Mankind led the charge, building looks around plaid layering, dark palettes, and the kind of deliberately undone styling that takes considerable effort to pull off convincingly. Oversized denim, skinny scarves, and stacked chunky jewelry rounded out the look. The era is back — and this time, it’s dressed with more purpose.
Hat Season Gets a Serious Upgrade
Winter headwear has rarely commanded this level of runway attention. Designers deployed an impressive range of styles, from structured pillbox silhouettes to voluminous knit beanies, each functioning as the punctuation mark of an otherwise complete look. The moment that cut through the noise, however, came off the runway entirely: A$AP Rocky debuted his brand AWGE wearing a fur trapper hat that immediately ignited conversation across fashion media. The broader lesson from the collections was that a hat is no longer an afterthought — it is, increasingly, the entire argument.
Lacing as a Design Language
Lace-up detailing moved well beyond the corset this season, evolving into a broader design vocabulary that touched outerwear, knitwear, and even hairstyling. Puffer jackets with laced closures offered a practical, fashion-forward alternative to standard winter coats, while lace-trimmed knit skirts blurred the line between structure and softness. Perhaps most striking was the extension of the trend onto the models themselves — laces woven into hairstyles on multiple runways, reinforcing the idea that this season’s silhouette does not end at the hemline.
As the fashion calendar moves toward the colder months, the Fall/Winter 2026 collections from New York offer a genuinely expansive toolkit for wardrobe reinvention. Whether the entry point is a single bold brooch, a leopard-print coat, or a plaid flannel layered with intention, the season rewards those willing to lean in. The runways have spoken. The rest is styling.
