In case you haven’t noticed, there is a Great Slimming happening with clothing. Super-baggy denim is being traded in for slimmer styles (we’re not at skinny jeans yet, thankfully), going-out clothes are returning to their Hervé Léger bandage-dress roots, and scarves are being worn as tops. The latest piece to go under the shrink-wrap treatment is the jacket, which, in its shrunken form, has become the first must-have piece of 2026.
One of the first places we saw the Great Slimming of the jacket was on the Dior Men runway last June, when Jonathan Anderson presented his first collection as the megalabel’s creative director. The Bar jacket, beloved by Dior customers for over 50 years now, got hitched up the abdomen, shortening its peplum and arriving just below the navel. Harry Styles wore it to present Album of the Year to Bad Bunny at this year’s Grammys. Indeed, Styles’ new era for Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. has been about tight shirts and cropped vintage finds: He also wore an abbreviated dinner jacket by Charles Jeffrey Loverboy as part of his announcement for Meltdown Festival. Demna’s new Gucci vision is also leaning into the tighter moment, with ‘90s-inspired pieces hiked up the waist.
The Fall/Winter 2026 runways in New York, while not necessarily rife with new ideas about clothes, leaned into this new fit with abandon — and the shrunken jacket carried the week. Rachel Scott’s first Proenza Schouler runway had fitted miniature peacoats with a peplum, shown in both tan and light-blue treated denim. 7 For All Mankind got a Mischa-Barton-slash-Serena-van-der-Woodsen-in-Gossip Girl rework from new creative director Nicola Bragnano, where teeny jackets played alongside maxi denim skirts. New York stalwarts Coach and Eckhaus Latta also played with proportion; Coach’s ‘80s-inspired reworked blazers and outerwear appeared to spend a bit too much time in the dryer, while Eckhaus’ plaid collarless jacket still left a little room for layering underneath.
The most exciting prospect of all is the way in which every designer styled out their pieces. 6397’s raw-hem bodycon jacket was made street-ready with patchwork gray denim and a headwrap; Colleen Allen’s buxom office lady kept things severe with a rigid pencil skirt. There are outfit equations entry-points for embracing jacket hike-up, whether with indigo denim and green ballet flats like Styles or as a skirt suit or as a Y2Chaotic mashup like 7 For All Mankind. Whatever way the mood strikes, it’s clear the oversized silhouette is slowly making its way out. Embrace the shrink and pick up the style now.
