Autumn/Winter 2026: What's Actually Changing

Fashion month for autumn/winter 2026 was always going to be read as a referendum on personnel rather than clothes. By the time the shows opened in February, nearly every major European house had changed hands: Jonathan Anderson holding a unified role across womenswear, menswear and couture at Dior, Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga, Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander, Glenn Martens at Margiela. Most of those debuts had happened the previous autumn. AW26 was the second serve — where you find out whether a designer has a house or just a launch. Underneath the noise, four things genuinely moved.

Outerwear got heavier, and hairier

The season's most durable shift, visible in every city. Bottega Veneta built a collection on fur, pile, shearling and fringe. Louis Vuitton ran shearling and fur through the whole show. Gucci showed belted fur coats; Schiaparelli went as far as fur trousers, and trimmed a denim jacket with brown shearling. Burberry sent tartan fur-trimmed coats in navy and garnet.

What stops this being a simple maximalism story is the Milan correction. Tod's, Prada and Marni pulled the other way, towards low-pile fur and calf-hair coats — texture without volume. That distinction matters, because one of those propositions works in Ireland and the other largely does not.

The related shape is the shearling-lined flight jacket with a funnel neck, at Balmain — where Antonin Tron built a collection around Air France's first female pilot — and at Dior. Daniel Lee closed London for Burberry at Old Billingsgate with a replica Tower Bridge and a floor of fake puddles: belted leather trenches, down-filled parkas, quilted bombers, calf-length shearling, and hoodies cut in paper-thin plongé leather. His opening trench had frilled lapels; his closing one, in glossy asphalt black, a Victorian jabot at the collar.

Colour went dark — and burgundy took red's job

An automated analysis of every Vogue Runway image for the FW26 season found black dominating to an unusual degree, with jet black and charcoal placing independently in the top ten. Burgundy emerged as the most common non-neutral, displacing red, which fell sharply along with yellow, light blue and lavender. Oxblood, wine, plum, brick red, olive and slate blue were all new to the top thirty.

Against that, a real enthusiasm for purple. Milan converged on a deep royal violet at Ferragamo, Sportmax and Jil Sander; Paris echoed it in Chloé's balloon trousers, Loewe's sculptural knits and Mugler's strong-shouldered blouses. Net-a-Porter's chief buying and merchandising officer, Brigitte Chartrand, confirmed she saw "chartreuse and purple appearing consistently throughout fashion month" — the version that counts, because buyers spend money.

Both are true. The volume is black and burgundy; purple is the accent that got bought. Read the purple headlines accordingly.

The waist came back — with one large exception

Peplums returned across Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, The Row, Givenchy and Balmain, with Proenza Schouler and Cecilie Bahnsen adding cinched waists. Dries Van Noten, under Julien Klausner, wrapped blazers tightly over graphic maxi skirts. London leaned eighties: structured shoulders at Erdem, off-the-shoulder satin and taffeta with clashing prints and feather trims.

The exception is Saint Laurent. Anthony Vaccarello opened with eight single- and double-breasted suits in black and chocolate brown that were slouchy and relaxed — ease where the rest of the season wanted structure — before earning the drama back in a finale of Le Smoking jackets, black lace and two gowns built over pannier skirts. If you are told the waist is mandatory, that is your counter-argument.

Trousers narrowed

Tod's, Gucci and Diesel showed trousers sitting between trousers and leggings, styled under oversized blazers and roomy coats. Paris went further with skin-tight stirrup pants at Stella McCartney, Balmain and Burc Akyol. This is not a wholesale return of the skinny jean: narrow below, volume above, and it collapses without the coat. Chloé's balloon trousers exist in the same season, which tells you how settled it is.

What survives an Irish November

The part most trend reports skip. Met Éireann logged 493mm of rain in autumn 2025 — 134% of the 1991–2020 average, and the fourth wettest autumn in 85 years of records, with 44 to 69 wet days recorded across stations. But the mean temperature was 11.18°C, nearly four-tenths of a degree above average and the fifth consecutive warmer-than-average season. Valentia in Kerry took 650.8mm.

Ireland's problem was never cold. It is eleven degrees and sideways rain — which is why the shearling story needs editing before it clears the airport.

That is the whole brief. A full-pelt Bottega or Vuitton coat is a garment for a dry continental winter; in Cork in November it is too warm, it wets out, and it takes three days to dry. The Milan correction — Tod's, Prada and Marni's low-pile fur and calf hair — is the version that functions here, because it gives you texture without the sponge. Better still is Burberry, built for exactly this weather: leather trenches, quilted bombers, plongé leather. Lee spent the season glamorising the utilitarian, and Ireland is the market that needs it least explained.

The most useful idea of the season came from Prada. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons put fifteen outfits on fifteen women and showed them sixty ways, models circling twice and shedding layers in ninety seconds to move, in the show's own framing, through different climates and different times, from public to private. Reversible coats, cotton shifts, tweedy coat interiors: a conceptual collection that happens to describe an Irish Tuesday precisely.

Croc-embossing replaced animal print at Gucci, Sportmax and Bottega Veneta, and embossed leather is far more forgiving of drizzle than suede.

On price, Net-a-Porter's autumn buy includes a Saint Laurent grain de poudre wool blazer at $5,200, a Toteme wool-blend coat at $1,450 and Wolford's 80 denier tights at $75 — US listings, so Irish delivered prices will differ. At the other end, Carraig Donn's AW26 range, which restates the Milan brief almost verbatim as statement outerwear, soft tailoring and croc-effect accessories, prices jacquard and brocade blazers between €55 and €70.

What we could not confirm

The colour analysis above is an automated image count run through a language model, not an industry standard like Pantone or WGSN — a strong indicator, not a measurement. Versace's creative direction was unresolved at the time of the shows — Dario Vitale had exited, Pieter Mulier was reported as likely successor — and we have not verified the current position. We could not establish which houses used real fur and which used faux, house by house, and the distinction matters. We have not seen the Brown Thomas or Arnotts AW26 buy, nor verified Irish stockist pricing for any runway piece named here.

What is not in doubt is that AW26 was the season the new appointments stopped introducing themselves. For now: buy the coat, buy it in burgundy, and check that it dries.