The Menswear That Stayed With Us

Dior

This season at Dior, we see Jonathan Anderson lean into performance using colour, styling and silhouette as tools of transformation. Allowing small gestures to shift the mood of this collection. Hair, by Guido Palau, in particular, is rather defining in Dior Homme’s Fall collection. Yellow wigs and sharp, Bowie-like cuts frame this season’s looks.

Anderson’s research this season hones back to early twentieth-century Paris, to a time when fashion, performance, and street life began to blur. Whilst walking the city, he became fixated on a small plaque set into the pavement on Avenue Montaigne, marking the former presence of Paul Poiret. 

That idea comes into focus with Look 2. A green flapper-style sequin top appears on the runway, light-catching and inherently glamorous. Placed within Dior Homme’s collection, the top feels deliberately out of step, the embellishment and ornamental detailing treated as part of everyday dress rather than a special occasion.

Look 14 returns us to tailoring, but with that same sense of displacement. A high shouldered grey suit reads as familiar at first, until stylised hair and colour push it elsewhere. The suit no longer signals structure. Your left feeling it was worn experimentally, as though Dior itself is being handled, tested, and reimagined in real time.

Dries van Noten

Julien Klausner has done it again. Now several seasons into his tenure at Dries van Noten, this Fall 2026 menswear collection radiates an understated cool. Klausner approached the collection with a concern for what happens once clothes leave the runway. How they are worn, how they drape on the body, and how they eventually fold back into the rhythm of everyday life. The menswear flowed with the confidence of someone who understands style is built slowly, through experimentation, repetition, instinct and wear. 

Knitwear sits at the heart of the collection. Layered maroon stripes, embroidered vests, and textured light knits are stacked without a second thought, grounded by languid tailoring and military greens. Look 17 captures this spirit best. A knitted hat pulled low, a blend of rich knits layered over a deep olive kilt-like skirt, worn entirely with ease. 

By the time you hit Look 56, the idea has settled with you. A long tailored coat, trailing at your feet, rich with print and pattern. Yet still reserved in its outcome. The coat leaves you thinking of a wardrobe built upon through thought rather than trend. It nods to Nureyev, readying to go to his next ballet rehearsal and quickly throwing the deep red coat over his leotard. Under Klausner, Dries van Noten menswear understands that style is not about arrival, but about what stays.

Hermes

Guided by Véronique Nichanian, Hermès does what it has always done best. It refines. This year’s Fall menswear collection is moulded by a deep understanding of fabric, proportion and pace. The menswear carries the confidence of a house that knows exactly what it is doing, and sees no need to announce it.

Tones and texture sit at the heart of the collection. Creams, charcoals, deep browns and blacks are handled elegantly with restraint, allowing leather, wool and cashmere to speak for themselves. Look 3 encapsulates this precision. A long cream coat with a black leather coat, so very Hermès, anchored together by a structured duffle bag. Practical, considered and quietly luxurious. The clothes are not one for performance. They simply sit beautifully.

By the time you reach Look 55, the overarching ethos is undeniable. A crocodile suit, cut effortlessly and worn without a hint of spectacle. Under Nichanian, Hermès menswear understands that luxury lies not in statement, but in trust.

Zegna

Alessandro Sartori’s latest collection cascades deliberately, shaped by a grasp that comfort, when handled properly, can be deeply refined. Nothing about Zegna feels forced. The clothes hang naturally on the body, allowing for movement, space and breath.

Colour plays a prominent role in Sartori’s Fall 2026. Warm ochres, soft browns, mustards and delicate greys and are manoeuvred with nonchalance and intention. Look 42 portrays this mood clearly. A golden knit worn with fluid, billowing trousers that feels generous and unrestrictive, a silhouette designed to dance with the wearer. There is a softness here that feels deliberate, and should not be mistaken for casual.

That nuance carries through to Look 32, where tweed is reworked with a gentler hand. Cut loose and worn with little to no rigidity, the suit feels familiar yet newly relaxed. As if you had borrowed it from a terribly stylish grandfather. You leave the look with the feeling of structure, without any of the pressure. 

Taken altogether, the collection suggests a shift away from rigid ideas of tailoring. Sartori’s Zegna is not about dressing for authority, but for living well. Vivere Bene. 

Sacai

Chitose Abe this season reminds us again why Sacai still feels fresh. Her menswear designs do not arrive neatly resolved. They wander, overlap and interrupt themselves. Garments slipping between categories as though resisting the concept of being pinned down. There is freedom here, but also purpose. Clothes that feel mid-thought, alive to the person wearing them.

Tailoring greets us first. Look 22’s plaid suit looks familiar at first glance, then slowly reveals its disobedience. Proportions sit slightly off, layers peeking out where you do not expect them to. The suit is donned with an ease that undercuts its formality, turning something inherently traditional into something louche and personal.

This movement is clarified in Look 40. A brown wool suit held together by duffle toggles nods to the world of fisherman’s coats and weathered outerwear. The rope undoes the suit’s formality. Changing not how it looks, but how it behaves.

Knitwear shifts the tone once more, Look 28’s tie-dye jumper brings colour that feels subtle and familiar, bringing up nostalgia from our teenage years. Layered over fluid hybrid short-trousers, the combination read as instinctive rather than overtly styled. Abe designs clothes for people who dress by habit and necessity. The garments slouch slightly off, open to perception, and resistant to fine polish. It is in that louche mood that the collection finds its energy.

Prada

At Prada this season, it wasn’t about polishing things up, it was about letting them show their age.

Across the Fall ’26 menswear show, clothes arrived already lived in. Jackets looked softened by time, their surfaces scuffed and faded like they’d been pulled from the back of a wardrobe rather than straight off a rail. Seams felt exposed, finishes imperfect, details deliberately a little off. It was menswear that remembered things and wore those memories openly.

But for us what really grounded it all were the cuffs. Massive, exaggerated, almost comically so. Shirts, coats and knits all seemed to pool at the wrist, as if sleeves had been rolled down one too many times and never bothered to be fixed. They added weight, drag, a sense of reality to otherwise precise silhouettes, the kind of detail you clock mid-walk and can’t stop thinking about.

So perhaps it seems like our moth-eaten knits and stained cuffs deserve a second life, maybe even a front-row seat! Keep the jumper with the hole at the elbow. Let the cardigan sag a little. Fall ’26 made a case for menswear that ages alongside you, not in spite of it, but because of it.

By Eve Bailey