Haute couture is often referred to as fashion’s laboratory. By collaborating with scientists, Iris van Herpen has turned that metaphor into reality: Her fall 2026 collection included a dress made, in part, by immaterial plasma. While the Dutch designer was focused on things intergalactic, Christian Dior’s Jonathan Anderson had been studying the work of the American multimedia artist Lynda Benglis. Elsewhere, Standing Ground’s Michael Stewart, ArdAzAei’s Bahareh Ardakani, and Rahul Mishra explored folklore related to their home countries, and fairytales tickled the imaginations of Chanel’s Matthieu Blazy and Robert Wun—though this was not exactly a season of child’s play. Extreme corsetry, volumes, and silhouettes morphed women’s bodies into unnatural forms, some hyper-perfect, others creature-like. At Balenciaga, where Pierpaolo Piccioli made his debut with bubble silhouettes that reference an iconic dress by the house founder and chez Jean Paul Gaultier, Duran Lantink had the last laugh—as an enfant terrible is wont to do. He dressed Seussian Marie Antoinettes in tulle-spouting dresses, not to mention model Leon Dame in a glitch torso that seemed to comment less on the body than on this age of technology and imagery.
Here, we count down the 13 trends of the fall 2026 haute couture season.
Body Issues
In trying to sculpt and prod women’s bodies into submission (at a time when their autonomy is being threatened across the globe, no less), couturiers seemed to suggest that the female form is fungible. From ginormous dresses that reduced the models within to prosthetic-like garments, designers not only competed with Mother Nature, but also toyed with playing mad scientist and creating the human body anew.
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