25 July 2026
If you’ve been anywhere near fashion coverage this year, you already know CHANEL had a huge run: a Métiers d’Art collection that took the house’s savoir-faire out of Paris and onto the streets, a Ready-to-Wear show built around a reworked wardrobe, and a Couture show that turned the runway into a full-on fairytale. Those are three very different collections, shown months apart, for three different purposes.
But here’s what’s actually interesting: look at all three together, and you start to see the same ideas showing up again and again. That’s not a coincidence — when one house keeps circling back to the same silhouettes and details across ready-to-wear, craft-focused, and couture collections, it’s usually a sign that idea is bigger than any one brand. It’s the industry talking, and CHANEL just happened to say it loudest.
Here are five Fall/Winter trends that CHANEL’s season reinforced, and why they’re worth paying attention to.
The skirt suit has been quietly building momentum for a couple of seasons now, and this fall it felt undeniable. The twist is that it doesn’t look like your mom’s boardroom uniform anymore. Instead of a tight, matchy-matchy set, think unexpected fabrics, unbuttoned jackets, and a shirt left untucked underneath.
CHANEL’s ready-to-wear show leaned all the way into this, treating the skirt suit as a kind of blank canvas – reworked in ribbed knits and technical fabrics, styled with an off-duty ease that made it feel current instead of corporate. If a house whose entire identity is built on the skirt suit is still finding new ways to reinvent it, that tells you the silhouette isn’t going anywhere this season.
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
With prices going up across the board, a lot of shoppers are rethinking what’s actually worth spending on. The answer this season seems to be pieces that feel handmade. Rich embroidery, beading, and jacquard are showing up everywhere, not as decoration but as the whole point. These are clothes designed to look like they took real time to make, because they did.
This is basically the entire premise of CHANEL’s Métiers d’Art collection, which exists specifically to showcase the hand embroidery, beading, and embellishment techniques of the house’s specialty ateliers. And the couture collection took it even further, with tweed reworked into something that looked almost alive – tiny floral details embroidered directly into the fabric rather than added on top.
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
The bigger story this season isn’t any single fabric – it’s how much is happening at once. Instead of picking one texture and keeping everything else quiet, the look right now is layering multiple textures and patterns in the same outfit and letting them compete a little. Tweed next to sequins, florals next to something metallic, matte against shine. Nothing is asked to be the lone statement piece.
CHANEL’s collections were a masterclass in this – two very different textures and patterns sharing the same look instead of one dominating. The couture show did a version of this too, with tweed reworked into something so multi-dimensional and tactile it almost stopped reading as tweed at all, closer to its own kind of print.
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
Vintage-inspired silhouettes have been trending for a while, but this season the specific decade getting the most love is the 1920s – drop waists, boyish tailoring, fringe, and a general looseness that moves when you walk.
CHANEL’s ready-to-wear show was full of drop-waisted dresses and boxy, boyish tailoring that nodded straight back to the house’s founding era, while the Métiers d’Art collection layered in explicit Art Deco references alongside a much more modern, streetwise energy. The combination is what keeps it from feeling like a costume – it’s vintage-inspired, not vintage-recreated.
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
Maybe the biggest overall shift this season is a move away from quiet, one-note minimalism and toward clothes that feel like they have a personality – even a narrative. Romantic details, intricate prints, and a sense of fantasy are all back in a real way.
You can see this most clearly in CHANEL’s couture collection, which built an entire fairytale world into the show, while still keeping the clothes themselves wearable rather than costume-like. The Métiers d’Art collection did something similar in a totally different register, building out a whole cast of characters – different women, different energies – all wearing the same collection in completely different ways.
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
None of these trends started with CHANEL, and they won’t end there either. But when a single house’s season, spanning ready-to-wear, craft-focused, and couture collections, reinforces the same five ideas over and over, it’s a pretty strong signal that these aren’t just runway fantasies. They’re the direction Fall/Winter dressing is actually heading, and they’re worth having in the back of your mind the next time you’re shopping for the season.
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 RTW
CHANEL Métiers d'Art 2026
CHANEL Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture