Going somewhere fancy? This season, designers suggested breaking out your party skirts—but not your “going out” tops.

Over the past weeks, Milan and Paris’s spring 2026 runways were rife with a dimphoric formula of festive, cascading skirts and relatively mundane tops. Think that plain office button-down with a New Year’s Eve-esque sparkle skirt placed at the bottom. A fitted black coat with a maxi fit for a princess. It’s very Carrie Bradshaw, and a bit like Sharon Stone’s infamous 1998 Oscars outfit taken to extremes. Let’s refer to this as the “statement skirt, plain shirt” phenomenon.

On the final eve of Paris Fashion Week, Chanel’s new designer Matthieu Blazy seemed especially drawn to the idea. He presented a sequence of skirt-forward silhouettes, including a cropped pinstripe Ch

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