As emerging trends go, this is one I never saw coming. Aprons have squeezed their way from the the kitchen and onto the runway. The most recent Paris Fashion Week, showcasing spring/summer trends for 2026, rounded out fashion month which saw the biggest fashion houses revealing their designs for the coming season. Following New York, London and Milan, a browse of the catwalk can give a good indication of what we’ll all be lusting over post-Christmas. And it looks like you might be donning your pinnie. Yes, really.
Designer fashion brand Miu Miu has climbed the fashion ranks in recent seasons and, in January, was crowned the world’s hottest brand by online fashion search platform, Lyst, thanks to its cult products, like bringing back the micro mini and boat shoes. This time it’s turning its hands to, erm, aprons. The French are indeed renowned for their culinary and fashion expertise, but aprons for spring? Now that is ground breaking.
The French are indeed renowned for their culinary and fashion expertise, but aprons for spring? Now that is ground breaking.
Miu Miu chose model royalty Milla Jovovich and acting royalty Richard E. Grant to strut down the runway wearing leather pinnies. A look that wouldn’t look out of place at a welders or horse farriers. Although the collection hasn’t been priced yet, Miu Miu’s leather jackets can cost upwards of £6,900 so, let it be known, the aprons won’t be cheap. Other models were given apron-turned-pinafores to wear – some floral, some embellished and some plain. Some even wrap around, reminiscent of your school dinner lady.
While the unusual accessory might seem like a bolt ouf the blue, on closer inspection, Miu Miu wasn’t the first to hail aprons the must-have product of the season. Other designer titans including The Row, Hermés and Phoebe Phlio have had aprons featured in recent seasons. So does that mean aprons are now hot?
Image Source: Getty Images
Get that traumatic image of the Butler in the Buff who came to your mates hen do out of your mind – that is not the vibe. Although, credit where credit’s due, those guys are doing a grand ol’ job. Turn your attention to recent lads, beyond Richard E. Grant’s cravat and cosy knit, and think of sexy chefs. David Beckham cooking up his “sticky stuff”, Jeremy Allen White in Disney’s The Bear, or Gordon Ramsey if that’s your thing.
Even the women who are capitalising on cheffing like Meghan Markle and her linen £34 Solino Home pinnie or Gwyneth Paltrow in her homely era. They both step into the kitchen wearing an apron. The Tradwives, who have had a strong surge on social media, cook in 100 per ent silk ball gowns like Nara Smith or in their scruffs like Hannah Neelam, but one thing they all have in common? A pinnie.
Get that traumatic image of the Butler in the Buff who came to your mates hen do out of your mind – that is not the vibe.
Even in the trailer for Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, we see a strapping, topless Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, wrestling with a bale of hay in a stable wearing, you guessed it, an apron.
Maybe it’s because when I was growing up in the nineties, the TV chefs from Delia Smith to Jamie Oliver never wore an apron. They made cooking less Mad Men with its “a woman belongs in the kitchen” aesthetic and aimed to make cooking more comfortable, easy and accessible to feed a family of four mixed with full-time job. But not an apron in sight.
I’ve never worn an apron in my life, aside from in Food Tech at school, and I’ve honestly never needed to as someone who never bakes and rarely cooks from scratch.
But these days, pinnies have somehow switched from being a practical addition to being either an overpriced kitchen status symbol, like brand Hedley & Bennet that was sold on Gwyneth’s Goop for upwards of £70, or a catwalk fashion statement.
Image Source: Netflix
The humble apron has done the downstairs, upstairs role reversal. Putting Elordi in a folded-down apron in Wuthering Heights signals he’s a working class, 19th century lad, mucking out the stables. That’s what aprons were for – the working class. Not blessed to have a wardrobe of workwear and daywear or even two of the same pair of trousers, clothes had to be protected by aprons and the wealthy weren’t doing hard labour so had no need for one. They were a symbol of lower status. Thanks to celebrities and brands, they’re now a symbol of high status.
Thanks to celebrities and brands, they’re now a symbol of high status.
But if you slip on an apron to go and sit at your desk, it’s not going to elevate your workwear, there will be stares. A pinafore dress is the midway point. We’ve seen Lola Tung, aka Belly from The Summer I Turned Pretty, wearing a pinafore dress by Spanish brand 404 Studio in New York, K-Pop singer Kang Hae-rin wearing a floor-length leather look at Dior’s fashion show. And they’re already emerging on the high street.
But lets leave the functional aprons for cooking and lean more into the stylish layering of a pinafore dress. Although if Jeremy Allen White wants to rock up in nothing but an apron, then I am open to it.
Clemmie Fieldsend has worked at a number of newspaper brands and is the former fashion editor of a national newspaper. She has over 17 years of experience commenting, writing and styling fashion and celebrity photoshoots. Clemmie reports on current fashion news, trends and hot takes across the celebrity and style stratosphere in both digital and print publications. She can decode trends to make them wearable, will forever be chasing the perfect pair of jeans and has an unreasonable hatred of rucksacks.
