From Love Letters To Heist Jewels, 5 Exquisite Spring Couture Accessory Trends
Couture Fashion Week usually delivers on red-carpet dress contenders, fantasy wedding wear and surrealist social-media fodder. Couture Fashion Week SS26 supplied so much more. Sure, the VVIPs were taken care of, but mere mortals were also sent into a tailspin as two newcomers, Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Matthieu Blazy of Chanel, delivered inspiration for those who normally take a voyeuristic (read: digital) view of the shows and see front-row spotting as a kind of sport. While the devil was still most certainly in the detail, there was a relaxing of the strict, corseted codes of this rarefied sphere. The joyful mood of the last ready-to-wear season seemed to live on in the ateliers, where the new-meets-old teams created a fresh kind of couture alchemy in, as Anderson said, “the laboratory of ideas where experimentation is inseparable from craft”. Here, five accessory trends that will be the linchpin of high fashion editorials for spring/summer 2026.
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Letters of note
After crumpling Chanel’s quintessential quilted leather to create gaping versions of the 2.55 for spring/summer 2026, Matthieu Blazy reimagined the signature bag style in light-as-air organza for his inaugural couture collection. The only item weightless enough to sit in the shoulder style? An embroidered love letter. Personalised for each model, each of Blazy’s gang selected a message, a haïku, a poem or an astrological sign to decorate the feather-like letters that fluttered down the runway. Romance, as we know, is at the heart of the creative director’s Chanel world (his very first edit was inspired by Coco’s appropriation of her boyfriend Boy Capel’s wardrobe), but this was the definition of true love for craft. While it remains to be seen whether the sentimental show pieces will go into production, couture clients can customise the sheer skirt suits with personalised embroideries. Swoon, swoon, swoon.
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Sweet cyclamen ear parties
The story goes that John Galliano, Jonathan Anderson’s childhood hero, gifted the newest Dior designer two posies of wild cyclamen (and a bag of Tesco treats) upon his first visit to the new-age atelier. Those sweet flowers, picked from Galliano’s own garden, formed the genesis of Anderson’s first Dior couture collection, in which he seemed to reference some of the silhouettes of Galliano’s tenure, but the colourways of Raf Simons’s. On the runway, the pink pom poms appeared most prominently as rosy spheres literally blooming at models’ ears. Galliano himself carried one of the pink silk sprigs to the front row, while Rihanna took a pair to the after-party, festooning her tee and jeans with the peppy bunches. But it was Stephen Jones, the milliner behind them, who really put the pops of joy into context: spring/summer 2026 marks his 58th couture collaboration with the house and three decades since he first came to Dior with Galliano himself. Talk about full circle.
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Heist jewels
How to make a splash during a season of debuts? Book awards season’s Best Supporting Actress Teyana Taylor (aka a literal goddess) to wear a ginormous tiara and crown and necklace inspired by the jewels that were lifted from the Louvre last year. Originally belonging to Empress Eugénie, the $102 million diamond haul was reimagined by Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry to accent his feathered, winged, spiked confections inspired by characters, such as “Isabella Blowfish”. Clocking in at around 100 hours of work, and featuring 1,200 micro strass and 445 pearls, Taylor’s OTT tiara chimes with an increased appetite for bejewelled headwear in the fashion arena. Or, as Vogue’s Julia Hobbs puts it, the “everyday” tiara. Just make sure your princessy headwear delivers on history.
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Haute hair trinkets
“The higher the feather headdress, the closer to God,” wrote Nicole Phelps of Alessandro Michele’s showgirl accessories in his high-drama show staged in a kaiserpanorama format. Headpieces, dripping with jewels and plumage, abounded, while ginormous ruffs crept up models’ necks, threatening to obscure their vision. With the Oscars around the corner, will any brand ambassadors dare to swagger onto the red carpet in Michele’s era-hopping accessories? (Surely the Vanity Fair after-party encourages this Old Hollywood opulence). Among the more fantastical showpieces, a couple of hair trinkets in the penultimate look captured the attention of the magpie within us. We’ve seen jewels peeping out of models’ locks in the ready-to-wear collections for some time (paging Simone Rocha!), but this was executed at another level. Is there anything more fancy than decorating your hair?
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Functional clutches
Among the bijoux ladybird bags and chainmail woodland creatures perched in models’ hands at Dior, there were good old-fashioned envelope clutches. It-bags be damned, these were functional eveningwear staples that reminded us that high-society clients still need non-whimsical receptacles in which to house their phone, lipstick and keys. Jonathan Anderson’s versions might have been realised in that same dreamy blue silk jacquard as Jessie Buckley’s Golden Globes dress, but Armani Privé’s plush clutches came in a smorgasbord of decidedly muted tones care of Mr Armani’s niece, Silvana Armani, who took the reins after his passing. As the only woman at the helm of a couture maison, Silvana understands what women need, as well as what they want – a crucial difference. Sometimes it’s sensible fashion that’s worth the (big) investment.
