Fall 2026: What to Buy, What to Buy Used, and What to Skip Entirely
Every publication has now run its fall trend list. Satin, purple, animal print, brocade, shrunken jackets, bold checks, ornate jewelry, two-tone shoes. You've seen the list four or five times by now, usually with a shopping widget underneath it.
What almost none of them will tell you is which ones not to buy. That's not a conspiracy — it's just that most style publishing is funded by the buy side, and "skip this" doesn't pay a commission.
So here's the version I give clients, which has a third column in it. Some of these are worth buying new. Several are worth having, but only secondhand. And two of them I'd skip entirely, at least if you live somewhere it rains for eight months.
How I'm judging
I run every trend through the same three questions, and I'd encourage you to use them on anything I don't cover here.
Is it a color and texture, or is it a silhouette? Colors and materials age slowly. Silhouettes date fast and date hard, because a shape is the thing your eye reads as "that's from a few years ago." A purple sweater from 2026 will look like a purple sweater in 2031. A specifically-cut jacket from 2026 will look like 2026.
How many things you already own does it work with? If the honest answer is fewer than five, it's not a wardrobe piece, it's an occasion piece — and occasion pieces should be priced accordingly, which usually means bought used.
What does it replace? A piece that replaces something is a wardrobe decision. A piece that replaces nothing is an addition, and additions are how closets get full of clothes nobody wears.
Buy it
Purple
The most wearable thing on the entire fall list, and it's a color, so it will not date. It's also genuinely flattering under Pacific Northwest light in a way that most of what we default to isn't — grey skies flatten black and wash out camel, and a deep plum or aubergine holds up.
Buy one piece, not a wardrobe's worth: a fine-gauge knit or a scarf. Roughly $90–180 for a good merino version. Skip the pale lilacs, which read as spring and won't cross into next fall.
Ornate jewelry
This is where the whole maximalist swing actually pays off, and it's the cheapest ticket in. Baroque-feeling earrings, a statement necklace, a brooch — you get the entire register change without buying a single new garment, and you can put it on top of clothes you already own.
If you only do one thing from this list, do this one. $40–90 buys you more visible change than a $300 jacket will.
Bold checks — but only in outerwear
A check or plaid overshirt, jacket or coat is a recurring classic that comes back every few years and never looks wrong in between. A full check suit is a costume, and you will wear it twice.
Outerwear also happens to be the category where a print earns its keep, because it's the layer everyone actually sees for six months. $150–300 for a wool-blend check overshirt or jacket.
Animal print, in small doses
Leopard hasn't been a trend for about forty years — it's functionally a neutral that periodically gets loud again. It's safe to buy.
The rule is scale. A leopard scarf, flat, bag or belt is a permanent wardrobe item. A leopard coat is a statement you have to be prepared to make every single time you leave the house. Snakeskin dates considerably faster than leopard does; if you're choosing between them, choose leopard. $60–140 for a scarf or flat.
Buy it used
Satin
Satin is the fabric most damaged by what's happened to garment manufacturing in the last two years. The difference between good satin and cheap satin is visible from across a room — cheap versions have a plasticky sheen, snag on everything, and show every water spot, which in this city is a serious practical problem.
But satin is also everywhere on resale, because it trends roughly every four years and everyone buys it and then stops wearing it. A well-made secondhand satin skirt or camisole for $40 will outperform a new $140 one, comfortably. This is the single best resale category on the list.
Opulent eveningwear — brocade, velvet, embroidery, fringe
I love this trend. I also think almost nobody should buy it new.
Be honest about the arithmetic. If you buy a $400 brocade jacket and wear it to two things this winter, that's $200 per wear. The same jacket, secondhand at $110, worn the same two times, is $55 a wear — and the secondhand market is full of exactly this category, for exactly the reason that everyone else also wore theirs twice.
Occasion dressing is the clearest case for resale there is. Budget $80–150 and you'll do better than most people spending three times that.
Skip it
Shrunken jackets
The one I feel most strongly about. This is a silhouette trend, which means it dates fastest, and it's specifically the reverse of the oversized blazer that everyone bought between 2021 and 2024. In three years, a shrunken 2026 jacket will read as "bought in 2026" the same way those oversized ones now read as "bought in 2021."
There's also a practical problem that's specific to living here: a shrunken jacket won't go over a sweater. That makes it a garment you can wear for about six weeks in spring and six weeks in fall, and not at all through the middle of winter. A short season and a short shelf life is a bad combination at any price.
If you love the look, the cheap way in is to wear a blazer you already own with the sleeves pushed up and one button done. You'll get most of the effect for nothing.
Two-tone shoes
I want to like these. A cap-toe in contrasting colors is genuinely beautiful, and if you lived in Los Angeles I'd tell you to buy them.
Here, the pale half of a two-tone shoe has a lifespan of roughly six weeks before it's permanently marked by wet sidewalks, and no amount of protector spray fixes it. You'd be buying a spring shoe in September.
If you still want them in March, buy them in March. They'll still be around, and they'll probably be on sale.
What I'd actually do with $500
If you want to participate in this season properly without buying anything you'll regret:
$70 — one pair of ornate earrings. This does the most work of anything on the list.
$140 — a purple fine-gauge merino knit.
$180 — a check wool overshirt or light jacket.
$70 — a leopard scarf or flat.
$40 — held back as a tailoring credit, so one thing you already own fits properly.
That's the entire swing of the season, absorbed into a wardrobe you already have, and not one item on that list will look dated in 2029.
The through-line, if you want one: this season is loud, and the correct response to a loud season is one loud thing. Not a new closet. The people who look best in a maximalist cycle are almost always the ones who changed one variable and left everything else alone.
Not sure which of your existing pieces the loud thing should go with? That's most of what I do. [Get in touch.]