Earlier this week, at the fall 2026 Prada menswear show in Milan, dirty shirts came down the runway. This was no accident, of course: Designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented deliberately-stained dress shirts, the cuffs and collars punctuated with artful splatters and splotches.
Why, you might ask, would such a fashion house want to make its clothes look worn-and-torn? “Built on traces of tradition, pieces are composed with familiar elements transformed through a questioning of convention,” read the official collection show notes. A runway piece looking anything less than picture-perfect certainly defies convention, but the ragged shirts served a specific purpose—to offset the sharp tailoring and smart coats that they were paired with, making them feel just a little more authentic, lived in, and, frankly, real.
While it is a polarizing aesthetic choice to create clothes so strategically grubby, they certainly do feel right for the moment. It’s safe to say the current environmental, economical, and political climate is challenging in many facets, so any fashions that are too consummately perfect right now face the risk of reading as, well, tone deaf. Designers, after all, have to create pieces that reflect the world we live in, and things in 2026 are. . . far from ideal.
Of course, it’s not the first time a fashion designers have played dirty. Over the years, fashion has been pretty obsessed with taking familiar closet staples—like a crisp white sneaker, or knit crewneck sweater—and well, f-ed them up. It’s an eye-catching way to demystify the world of high-fashion, that’s for sure.
Back in the resort 2018 season, for instance, Gucci made waves when it showed white sneakers that looked like they had just been on a dusty trail run—the luxurious styles covered in a grimy-gray effect. Brands like Golden Goose continue to sell similar styles, doubling down on the idea that distressed can be chic.
Luxurious bags have gotten similar treatments. Back in spring 2014, Chanel—during the Karl Lagerfeld era—released a dirtied, graffitied collection of totes and backpacks (some of which go for upwards of $15,000 now). More recently, for fall 2022, Demna’s Balenciaga showed leather bags designed to look like trash bags, and he’s also shown leather clutches shaped into crumpled chip bags. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Tattered, ripped jeans and ruined knits have also had many moments on the catwalk. Back in spring 1998, Helmut Lang showed a series of paint-splattered jeans that many still often replicate today (like when Raf Simons collaborated with artist Sterling Ruby on acid-wash denims for fall 2014). During the fall 2016 season, Rick Owens presented knit sweaters that oozed with a dripping motif from the neckline—as though someone had dropped an entire can of paint all over them.
There’s no question that this approach has been a recurring runway trend, to strip down items and make them feel a little less precious. But given the price tag for such pieces does not reflect something that is actually ruined—in fact, these pieces can be even more expensive than normal ones, as it took a lot of time and effort to make them look so disheveled!—the question is, are people actually wearing them? Or is this just a runway novelty?
The internet is currently debating the new Prada collection. One TikTok user called it “collapsed economy core,” while another speculated that the aesthetic choice was actually a clever nod to the popularity of secondhand Prada pieces. (Because admit it: If you stumbled upon a priceless runway piece on The RealReal, you may just overlook a stain or two.)
Whatever your opinion on the fad is, perhaps the takeaway here is not to spend thousands on artfully-stained pieces, but rather to be less precious about the fashions we do own and love. We should wear our clothes and wear them well. Remember when Mary-Kate Olsen walked around with a wine-stained Balenciaga City bag in the 2000s? Or how Jane Birkin used to overstuff her luxurious Birkin bags? More of that energy in 2026, please: Love the things in your closet, and give them a well-earned life! Life is not perfect and neither do our clothes have to be.
