This season, Prada kicked off Milan Fashion Week with a collection of 63 looks dedicated entirely to the skirt. While the offerings ranged in length, most fell roughly to the knee in a semi-structured fashion. Some were satin, some were wool. Some featured an unconventional strip of velcro, others a sheer casing. The look mimics Mrs. Prada’s signature uniform of a simple sweater and this style of skirt; she famously once said that skirts are like T-shirts to her, nodding to their versatility.
Prada Spring 2027
Unofficially, Saint Laurent’s show in Paris this week kind of did the same thing. Though Anthony Vacarello’s most obvious through-line was the fact that his whole collection was blanketed in gold leaf, most looks featured a pencil skirt hitting just below the knee. The following day, this style of skirt dominated Dries Van Noten’s collection, as well, with a series of glamorous looks in mismatched prints. In fact, it seems so many of the collections throughout fashion month did the same, exalting the silhouette as the “It” look of the season.
Back in New York, Joseph Altuzarra showed slit pencil skirts styled with brogues and oversized shirts. Tory Burch paired her version with embroidered cardigans, while Michael Kors swapped in knit polos and blazers. In London, Burberry reworked knee-length skirts in utilitarian materials coordinated with matching jackets. And then in Italy, Ferragamo stripped the structure out of a 1940s skirt suit, Gucci put aristocratic rebels in wool pencil skirts with faux fur coats, and Marni included a range of to-the-knee skirts in its quirky mod vision for the season.
Dries Van Noten Spring 2027
The trend has been building for a while now, thanks in no small part to the relaxed silhouette of skirt suits Matthieu Blazy is championing at Chanel. But this season, they seem to be everywhere, crystallizing their impending reign.
Back in the 20th century, fashion dictated a specific skirt length for each season, but that is no longer the case. Hemlines haven’t moved in a singular fashion in decades. Today, any skirt length is trending somewhere. But knee-length was actually the one hemline that wasn’t cool. In the late 2010s, it fell out of fashion. Skirts were either short or long, mini or maxi. Even the in-between length, the midi skirt, really hit mid-shin. In becoming uncool, the knee-length version adopted a womanly, even matronly connotation — but that’s what makes it so fun for designers to play with today. Another vantage point could cast these skirts as glamorous relics of another time.
Marni Spring 2027
On the runways, the knee-length skirt can often read as womanly, ladylike. It’s feminine, but with an intellectual slant. There’s a hair of a corporate context — the pencil skirt is famously an office favorite — but these aren’t as tight as the typical pencil skirt. They skew a little more A-line. They’re perhaps more like what the bookish character in a 2010s movie would wear. But the styling and materiality of today’s version is what makes them fabulous. Shiny leather, crystal embroidery, safari pockets, oh my! Many designers showed them with menswear-inspired items like oversized shirts or utility jackets, quirky accessories, and solid shoes like a pump or a hefty, flat brogue — no flimsy stilettos here. It’s all very reminiscent of Prada collections from the 2000s and 2010s.
It’s especially fun to put these skirts into dialogue with overarching trends of the past few years. In the context of womenswear separates, bottoms specifically, recent seasons have been all about pants — more specifically, slouchy, wide-leg trousers, the kind that Phoebe Philo helped usher into popularity. Philo and her cohort concocted an image of laissez-faire cool with their baggy cargos and slick leather jackets, a pragmatic take on femininity that didn’t ooze, well, femininity. This new look is slightly less practical and markedly more femme, but still retains nuance. The knee-length skirt isn’t “cool” in the way of a leather jacket, but it isn’t trying to be. The proprietors of the knee-length skirt are earnestly courting a legacy that’s more focused on being fabulous.
