The “baggy skinny” is the only denim I’m interested in 2026

Once a fantasy fashion playground for the one per cent, couture fashion week has found its way into mainstream media in recent years, in large part thanks to the collective obsession with seeing celebrities tottering towards the front row in improbable looks that cost more than most people’s life savings. (See Kylie Jenner’s lion’s head look from 2023.) But spectacles aside, the runway looks that transcend the runway and directly impact women’s wardrobes are almost always the simplest.

Robino Salvatore

Case in point: the look that has lived rent-free in our heads over the past month is not a Price on Application gown, but an unassuming jeans and jumper combo from Chanel’s pre-fall 2026 catwalk show, staged on a New York subway platform back in December. Model Bhavitha Mandava (who was, fittingly, scouted on the subway) hit the runway in a quarter-zip jumper styled with a lust-worthy pair of jeans that seemed to defy categorisation – they weren’t skinny or straight-leg, nor were they truly baggy. We’ve been calling this somehow-just-right hybrid silhouette the “skinny baggy”.