There hasn’t been this much talk about skirts in the cultural zeitgeist since Mary Quant emancipated the mods of King’s Road all those years ago. But don’t call this a new youthquake just yet, with the leading skirt trends prevailing this autumn taking a more secretarial format. Still, they aren’t immune from making a statement.
From Chanel’s drop-waist jersey styles to Calvin Klein’s CBK-esque pencil shapes, these are pieces that act as a proverbial blank canvas for designers to decorate to their heart’s content. Whether it's Matthieu Blazy realising them in chintzy tweed or Miuccia Prada embroidering them with sequin paillettes, skirts are serving as the ultimate form of creative expression. (As Prada herself said about party skirts, “The skirt is like a T-shirt, so I put all my ideas there.”)
This season, however, it’s not just simply about adding high-octane feathers or decorative embellishments. Indeed, the most dominant trend on the recent autumn/winter 2026 runways was none other than patterned skirts. This ran the gamut from Versace’s face skirt, which featured Andy Warhol-inspired screen prints of famous figures like Bianca Jagger and Grace Jones, to Ralph Lauren’s new frontier landscapes and Dries Van Noten’s patchwork styles comprised of perennially coordinated chaos.
These skirts do more than propose you take a short break from jeans this season or encourage you to rethink how you style your basics. Instead, they prove that prints do far more than any colour or frill could ever do in making an impact. Better still, these printed skirt trends ask us to embrace our inner printmaxxers, styling them up with more magpie items like zebra-printed boots and vintage band tees.
As for investing in the trend? That’s the easy part. From brands like London wunderkind Ashley Williams and New York phenomenon Tyler McGillivary backing the trend—not to mention labels like Evil Girl Collective making pieces like a Freudian Slip with, you guessed it, Sigmund Freud’s face plastered on it—there’s so many styles to covet. Scroll through to see the key printed skirt trends of autumn 2026.
The 5 Key Printed Skirt Trends for Autumn 2026
1. Faces
Style Notes: Who needs a collection from the Gagosian when you could walk around looking like the National Portrait Gallery? Fashion’s chicest dressers like their art wearable, swinging from their hips instead of hanging on their walls. Versace’s face skirts are the most ubiquitous version of this trend and will go down in history as a collector’s item from Dario Vitale’s first and only collection as creative director. But the Chanel midi from Matthieu Blazy’s debut Manhattan-inspired Métiers d'art collection, which features riffs on the movie poster for the 1931 film Tonight or Never, is also an incredibly covetable option.
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2. Patchwork
Style Notes: Quiet luxury had a great run, but there’s no further proof that this once-beloved way of dressing has been put out to pasture than in the patchwork skirt trend. This print will speak to anyone who suffers from decision fatigue—hello, Libras with executive dysfunction—as you don’t have to choose from a myriad of different patterns. By embracing different textures and tones, as Dries Van Noten has throughout his entire career, you’re left with something that’s a pastiche of clashing textiles, fabrics and colours.
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3. Florals
Style Notes: Florals have had quite the enigmatic rebrand this year, as fashion people ditch ditsy prints in favour of something a little more mature. From the Claude Monet-esque watercolour botanicals spotted in Jonathan Anderson’s latest creations for Dior, to the chinoiserie-style flowers stitched onto Conner Ives-inspired fur-trim jackets, this motif is once again in bloom. For autumn, things take a slightly vampy turn, either rendered in a more seasonally appropriate colour palette of rich siennas and burnt umbers or blown up into exaggerated proportions that nod to the falling leaves and wilting blossoms.
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4. Polka-Dots
Style Notes: For those who have taken quite a liking to the Sloane Ranger styles of hit television programs like Rivals and The Gentlemen, the news that polka-dots are still trending for autumn should be enough to help you hold out until the next season of both shows. A staple in the wardrobes of the Princess of Wales, both Kate and Diana, this trend is inherently elegant with posh and feminine undertones that make it hard to dispute its appeal. And with options available to shop from Valentino to Khaite and Jacquemus, it seems that the well-heeled women across every style capital think the same.
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5. Checks
Style Notes: The Scots amongst us will be rolling their eyes at the fact that kilt-inspired checked skirts make an appearance every winter, but there is no denying their popularity. At Acne, they took a preppy tone with schoolyard blues and pleats through the leg. At Louis Vuitton, they feature as textured minis with mirror embellishments. At Chanel, they were rendered in glitzy chainmail made for evenings out.
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