This week, an exploration of what Spring 2026 designers are thinking with all their fur, leather and thick layers. Plus, how an intimates brand is gaining high fashion cred.
It’s officially Fashion Month Spring 2026, but you could have fooled me.
Back in New York, Joseph Altuzarra showed a fur coat, a fur skirt and multiple looks with fur sleeves, while Alexander Wang debuted fur skirt sets, fur scarves and a little black dress with fur trim. The cold-weather dressing carried over to London, where Roksanda Ilinčić, for example, showcased cocoon-like leather coats, dramatic capes and dresses weighed down with plume-look fringe. But perhaps Demna was the biggest culprit of disregarding the designated season, with his first designs for Gucci: Fur, leather and feathers were main ideas, along with outerwear and leather accessories, including gloves and knee-high boots.
Including heavy knits, wool suiting, and coats in spectrum-spanning silhouettes and fabrications, fall fashion is unexpectedly having a moment this Fashion Month. However, when asked about their decisions to show heavier styles, designers offered little by way of an explanation.
Bronx & Banco founder and designer Natalie De’banco said she chose Spring 2026 to introduce outerwear to her brand because it offers an “oversized and relaxed look” that suits the season.
Meanwhile, Dushane Noble, head of design at Theory, said the brand’s leather pieces for Spring “provide a nice tension for the tailored and soft, sensual pieces” found throughout his collection.
What they did confirm is that these are not see-now, buy-now fall collections, the likes of which crept into Spring Fashion Months of years past.
So, what gives?
Glossy asked Achim Berg, fashion and luxury advisor and investor, and founder of independent corporate think tank FashionSights, to break it down. He offered three explanations for the very fall-like Spring 2026 Fashion Month:
1. “There’s a big difference between [what’s showcased] in runway shows and on social media — especially during the relaunches of so many brands under new designer leadership — and what will hit the stores as a brand’s commercial collection. For many brands, the runway collection accounts for a very small percentage of [what is sold]. So, it could be that the designers just want to play it extra safe [on the runway]. It’s more important now, in the short term, to get good ratings and to get a positive sentiment around the brand than to double down on what will really hit stores.
If you look at the first pictures of some of the brand relaunches, every new designer is going to the archives and referencing [house] codes — and I assume we’ll see more of that, because it’s not a completely different view on things, and it’s not an output of crazy creativity. The fashion houses are not in the mood to take massive risks. Most of the designers showing have just moved from one fashion house to another one, so it’s not like, ‘We are betting on completely new talent,’ or, ‘We’re betting on someone from a smaller brand.”
The general mood of the industry is: Nobody wants to mess it up. But brands still need some freshness and some newness, so they’re going a bit more conservative.”
2. “Why fall is safer right now is due [in part] to the weather conditions. Europe, for its part, is moving toward autumn — summer’s over. So, real spring styles may take a lot more imagination [for the consumer to see themselves in] than something that relatively better fits the weather outside.”
3. “Designers are also considering the current mood. From a political point of view, the world is not in a light-hearted, spring feeling. It’s much more muted. The political environment is difficult, the macro environment is difficult, and because people are afraid of AI technology and the impact that it may bring in the future, we’ll probably see brands being conservative and playing safe for a while.”
In the interview, Berg shared additional insights into how high fashion is strategizing in response to current macroeconomic conditions.
For how long do you expect brands to be so cautious?
“I think we are at the beginning of the crisis, rather than the end. Luxury and the fashion industry had an amazing run from 2016 until sometime in 2023 — and then, we had a phase where they were trying to tell everybody that there is no crisis. But there clearly is a crisis. It’s a combination of a cyclical crisis and a structural crisis. The cyclical part is the macro environment and the lack of [consumer] sentiment to spend because of the [economic] outlook. The structural part is the massive overpricing over the last few years, which was not well-received by customers. … And on top of that, there’s also a bit of a creative crisis. Why do we have more than 20 designers changing? A lot of [brand leaders] felt they needed something new. They needed a new topic. And after streetwear and the short [trend] of silent luxury — which is clearly not for everybody and every brand, and doesn’t translate to newness and the impulse to buy — the whole industry is now looking for direction. And in this environment, do you go crazy and take the biggest leap with something that is completely new and highly risky? Probably not. You’d rather go back and look for the moment when the brand [best clicked] with culture, and you try to reinterpret that in a way that fits with the current environment and the current company.”
What do luxury fashion consumers buy in times of crisis?
“At the moment, you need to convince them to buy at all. The aspirational customer who was eager to be part of luxury is getting hit hardest in the macroeconomic environment. And they are also the [demo] that is least confident about the future. That’s why every [brand] was recently [targeting] the high net worth individual — because they can spend regardless of [economic] cycles. To [win shoppers,] brands are going to need a combination of solid products, products that fit into an overall fashion and products with [understandable] prices. That is what the industry has shown. Brands cannot drastically bring down the inflated prices of some of their iconic pieces, because those who bought at those high prices would feel very betrayed. So they need to introduce new products — new variations, different fabrics — to offer something at lower prices.” –Jill Manoff
How intimates brand Cuup is aligning with high fashion
Two years after being acquired by FullBeauty Brands, the intimates brand Cuup is seeking to differentiate itself from other DTC intimate brands. And to do that, it’s turning to high-fashion partnerships.
At this season’s New York Fashion Week, Cuup collaborated with Rachel Scott, the creative director of Diotima and newly announced creative director at Proenza Schouler. For Diotima’s debut runway show, Scott commissioned three customized pieces of Cuup intimate wear that were integrated into three different sheer looks on the runway. In a press statement, Scott said she chose to work with Cuup “not only because their intimates are designed with such precision and inclusivity, but because they pair seamlessly with my sheer pieces.”
For Cuup’s creative director, Yesenia Torres, showing up at NYFW and on the runway of one of the most talked-about designers of the season was a big win for the brand. Cuup has been seeking to position itself as a high-fashion-adjacent brand with a focus on good design sensibilities.
“We have always found that our customer and Diotima’s customer are one and the same: women who value modern design, elevated details and a strong point of view,” Torres said. “We often see our bras paired back to Diotima, especially in open or sheer looks that call for beautiful intimates to be seen.”
She pointed to another recent custom example when Aurora James commissioned a custom Cuup balconette bra to pair with a Diotima dress she wore to the Ebony Power 100 event last year.
“It was such a seamless expression of both brands’ ethos,” Torres said.
While Cuup does not report annual revenue, its parent company, FullBeauty Brands, has revenue of over $800 million. FullBeauty called Cuup a “high-growth brand” when it acquired Cuup in late 2023. Cuup’s sister brands Eloquii and Dia & Co have also signed fashion partnerships: Eloquii has worked with Kate Spade and Dia with Diane von Furstenberg.
Torres said Cuup is hoping to sign more big-name fashion partnerships in the future, with the ultimate goal of becoming the official intimates brand of New York Fashion Week. It’s a lofty goal, and one that comes with some competition. Underwear brands like Soma and Adore Me have held events at NYFW, including pop-ups and runway shows, though they haven’t partnered with a designer as buzzy as Scott. Commando, meanwhile, has shown up on countless runways over its 22-year history.
“For us, fashion partnerships are not just about visibility, they are about cementing CUUP as a house of design that elevates how intimates are seen in culture,” Torres said. –Danny Parisi
Inside Glossy’s coverage
Overcrowding and exclusivity exposed deeper cracks in London Fashion Week
How Kate Spade’s new CEO plans to revive the brand
Amazon Luxury’s Trisha Gregory on scaling Saks partnership and redefining marketplace prestige
