Once a Mere Hairstyle, the Mullet Is Now a Dress Code
If fashion designers formulated a new law of physics, it’d likely read as a “the longer the coats, the shorter the shorts” theorem of proportion.
At Paris and Milan's Spring/Summer 2026 fashion week shows this past June, that concept was put into action by way of a mass cropping of pants and lengthening of their outerwear hems. We're talking itsy-bitsy teeny-tinies underneath coats that all but hit the floor, amounting in an armada of literal high-low menswear.
From Wales Bonner to Craig Green, Lemaire to Auralee, and Prada to Louis Vuitton, there was an abundance of these sweeping, breezy trench coats that fluttered above boxer-like briefs and silky button-downs. Certain outfits conjured up a sense of the wearer having thrown their clothes on in a hurry, while others proposed modern page-boy prep.
At Dries Van Noten, an overcoat hung ever so idly off a model's shoulders, concealing an orange-patterned ensemble. Running an errand in our pajamas, are we? Elsewhere, an outermost robe covered a shirt and tie by Hed Mayner for a leg-baring, flasher-core uniform both kinky and casual.
Is this a response to climate change's wacky weather? Cold mornings, hot noons, freezing aircon?
Or have people just become tired of “summer staples”, the laziness and limits of the concept, its temperature versus time-of-day paradigm? Consider this a pitch then, for transitional wear that intends to move not (just) between seasons, but places and occasions.
Not quite business in the front but certainly party in the back, the juxtaposition of barely-there with big 'n baggy perfectly ties in with what has been fashion's latest declarative appreciation of polarities, thermal and otherwise. Think, for instance, of Dior's romantic workwear or Saint Laurent's powdery power suits.
Precursors to this percolating high-low mixing of shorts with long jackets already appeared at Paris Women's a few months ago, where bulky ‘80s blazers were worn sans bottoms altogether.
These looks and their spawn evade, if not outright defy, gendered styling and shapes.
Clearly, high-low no longer refers to tacky prom gowns, mullets, or the pairing of cheap and expensive. It's a new sartorial axiom that manifests in what'll be next year's paramount code of dress.
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