Fashion week is no longer the sneaker-fest it once was. And at the Spring/Summer 2026 menswear shows, this was made abundantly clear.
This season felt like a true turning point. There were sneakers making their way down the runway, sure, but for the first time in years, we were more enamored with every other kind of footwear.
Designers were shifting their focus back to leather shoes, and it felt like a reassertion of material craft and luxury. A recalibration of taste.
The sneaker-heavy streetwearification of luxury is old news, forecasts of a post-sneaker society have swollen in the first half of the 2020s, and taste-defining designers were pushing the narrative potential of leather footwear.
Prada set the tone early. Presenting at Milan Fashion Week, the first stop before the SS26 season moved to Paris, there was a noted lack of sneakers.
Vans-like pumps were the most casual of Prada’s SS26 footwear, a simple take on a classic thin-shaped shoe. There was nothing simple about the leather footwear, though.
Sleek leather loafers and derbies had their toes snipped off, creating a freaky formal concoction. Then there was Prada’s reclamation of the driving loafer as a softened all-purpose slip-on that’s more middle ground between the ease of a sneaker and the smartness of a shoe.
Prada, under the co-creative direction of Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada, has a well-documented knack for predicting where fashion is headed. And from here on, we saw much of the same: Many reinventions of Vans’ most famous shoes alongside brilliant leather creations.
At Dior, footwear tangibly manifested a new creative direction for Jonathan Anderson.
Most prevalent in Anderson’s debut Dior outing was its new Roadie shoe, a mid-top model that sits somewhere between a suede chukka boot and a thin-soled elderly sneaker. And this was not the only piece of clever hybridised design displayed, as boat shoes were also elevated with formal heeled leather soles.
Move on to Louis Vuitton and there, too, is a balance of Vans-coded sneakers with more elegant leather productions. Loafers were crafted from a textured rough suede, oxford shoes had their heeled soles slimmed down to barely-there proportions, and even the flip-flops were crafted entirely from LV’s top-grade leather.
All brought together, and Louis Vuitton’s shoes present a deliberate shift toward footwear that feels grounded, textural, and artisanal.
Armani’s studded and fringed leather clog, meanwhile, merged traditional folkcraft references with luxury tailoring. Its chunky wood-effect sole, brass stud detailing, and dramatic fringe tassels gave it an artisanal, almost sculptural presence, suggesting a footwear silhouette that’s both rooted in craft and elevated to dramatic effect.
This widespread pivot back to “proper” leather shoes, albeit with a balance of the soft and hard, feels like fashion reasserting materiality, craft, and subtlety as the markers of luxury.
But that’s not to say there were no good sneakers.
Many of the SS26’s finest sporty shoes did, admittedly, take notes from the world of dress shoes. PUMA and _J.L-A.L_ ‘s leather shoes, for instance, brought a chunky sneaker sole together with a glossy leather upper. And Wales Bonner, maker of the best adidas sneakers in recent years, also changed tack to create a formal bowling shoe-style sneaker infused with an air of formality.
This spruced-up athletic footwear presents a similar concept to the now-viral sneaker-loafer, though approached with more subtlety. Which only made Willy Chavarria’s basketball sneakers feel all the more eccentric.
Chavarria’s bulbous sneaker was not only more athletic-looking than the vast bulk of SS26’s sneakers, but also far more imposing than the majoritively slimmed-down shoes. It felt like an extension of his sculptural, oversized tailoring, a sneaker that amplified the body rather than streamlined it.
Clearly, there are still good sneakers out there, and they are still present at fashion week. The only difference today is that when rounding up the best current footwear on the runway, the balance has swayed toward more traditional forms.
During the SS26 season, there were many good sneakers. But many more great shoes.
SHOP OUR FAVORITE PRODUCTS
Highsnobiety has affiliate marketing partnerships, which means we may receive a commission from your purchase.
