The clean girl era truly seems to be fading as 2026 unfolds. With it goes the obsession with a polished, almost sterile image. In its place, a different aesthetic is gradually taking hold. One that embraces snags, creases, and visible wear. In 2026, fashion no longer erases flaws, it reveals them and proudly claims them. Let’s take a closer look.
Clothing as a mark of time
At Prada, the Autumn-Winter 26 collection, unveiled during Milan Fashion Week, stood out for its striking details: stained sleeves, moth-eaten fabrics, and carefully mended knits. Running through it all was a single thread, the passage of time. Layers of clothing turn into layers of memory, as though each silhouette were moving through eras right before our eyes.
With this collection, the duo of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons continues their deconstruction of the masculine silhouette. It is no longer about redefining manhood through rupture, but through continuity. A man who embraces where he comes from and knows where he is headed.
The deliberately altered garments are neither gimmicks nor provocations; they bear witness to lived experience. They speak of a body that inhabits its clothes, wears them in, keeps them, transforms them. A wardrobe that does not seek to impress, but to endure.
Chanel unfiltered
At Chanel, for the Spring-Summer 26 collection beneath the dome of the Grand Palais, Mathieu Blazy makes a striking entrance. For his first proposal at the helm of the house of the camellia, he too tackles the question of time. And what better way than by reinterpreting the Timeless which quite literally means “timeless”?
Under the artistic direction of the Franco-Belgian designer, the iconic bag is worn open, distorted. It almost seems to have been forgotten at the back of a damp cupboard. With this new version of the Timeless, the designer offers his own definition of beauty and, in the process, proves that a Chanel bag, regardless of its condition, can be worn with pride.
With this collection followed by the Métiers d’Art and Couture shows, the designer lays the first stones of a new chapter for the house.
The wardrobe as a life partner
At Celine, Michael Rider is also in a phase of self-assertion. He is seeking to make his voice heard after the powerful tenure of Hedi Slimane, who led the house for six years. For his second collection, he presents a wardrobe built to last, pieces to keep, to carry with you, to absorb places and moments. A reassuring collection, like a Proustian madeleine.
No runway show this season, but a domestic staging instead. At the center of the room stands a tower of multicolored sweaters. Around it, complete silhouettes, scarves hanging, garments casually left behind. On a table, a tote bag sits half-open, a scarf spilling out, as if its owner had just stepped out or were about to return at any moment.
Beside it, a leather jacket appears to have been cast adrift on the wooden floor. The many pins covering it are an obvious metaphor for the passage of time, the places travelled, the memories gathered. On the floor, shoes wind their way in a sinuous line. A way for the designer to reveal the many facets of the man he envisions this season and more broadly within one of the flagship brands of the LVMH group.
2026, a turning point?
Fashion today seems to be pushing back against a society obsessed with mastering time. It is slowing down, embracing wear, and shaping wardrobes designed to endure.
This movement stands in direct friction with the dominant narratives circulating on social media, where the pursuit is quite the opposite: to slow the effects of time, to conceal them, to correct them. Wrinkles erased, skin tightened, youth artificially prolonged and brand-new clothes proudly displayed.
Works such as The Substance or the series Beauty satirize this obsession with control, this panicked fear of ageing. They expose, sometimes to the point of absurdity, the desire to remain intact, immutable, outside of time. In contrast, the fashion of 2026 offers something different. It does not promise eternal youth, but a form of truth. It suggests that imperfection is not something to be corrected, but a richness to be proudly embraced.
