The trench coat is out, or at least it’s no longer the automatic answer to what to wear over everything this September. UK search interest around the phrase has spiked in the past week, right as the autumn 2026 shows and the first cold mornings collide, and the reason is simple: stylists and design houses are quietly pointing towards five other jacket shapes instead.
It’s the kind of shift that always causes a small panic before a new season, because a trench has been the safe, expensive-feeling choice for over a decade. This year, though, the alternatives on offer, from drawstring waists to frog closures borrowed from centuries-old tailoring, are different enough to be worth the wardrobe reshuffle.
So is the trench coat really over for autumn 2026?
Not entirely, but its status has changed from default to background player. At Victoria Beckham’s autumn show, the outerwear moment came from a drawstring jacket that cinches at the waist rather than belts at it, while Niccolò Pasqualetti’s runway leaned into a funnel-neck shape that swallows the throat and changes the whole silhouette underneath it. Neither reads as a trench substitute exactly, but both do the trench’s old job: they’re the piece you put on last and think about first.
There is one loophole worth knowing about: a trench cut in suede still counts as current, because it behaves more like a texture story than a basic. It marks in the rain unless it’s been treated with a protector spray beforehand, and needs re-treating over a season of wear. The polyester “suede-look” versions common on the high street sidestep that problem, but they don’t move or age the same way, which is worth knowing before you assume one is a straight swap for the other.
Why are frog closures and military braiding everywhere again?
Because both have history long enough to keep resurfacing. The frog closure, that knotted loop-and-toggle fastening, has its roots in Qing dynasty Chinese tailoring, where it was designed to fasten silk garments without a single button. Military braiding and frogging trace back to Napoleonic-era officer uniforms, where the ornate cording signalled rank before it ever signalled fashion. Both details have spent two centuries drifting in and out of Western clothing, and they’re back in force this season.
Valentino showed the closure on a deep, plunging V-neck leather jacket, Daniella Kallmeyer’s version arrived in silk, and Isabel Marant, styled by Kim Bekker, put it on quilted leather. Khaite went further into the military reference itself, with hand-embroidered cording on structured leather. Once a detail like this appears at four different houses in one season, it tends to trickle down fast, and Reformation, Zara, H&M and Róhe have already put more accessible frog-closure jackets into circulation.
The straight military jacket, all stiff shoulders and Napoleon-coded braiding, is having its own moment via Alexander McQueen, Ann Demeulemeester and Vaquera, and it’s worth remembering this shape has a very specific British reference point: Cheryl Cole’s Julien Macdonald “Fight For This Love” jacket from 2009, still the touchstone whenever this silhouette resurfaces. Elsewhere, Conner Ives is pushing a softer, collarless satin jacket with bird embroidery, part of a wider move away from traditional lapels that sits close to the indie sleaze aesthetic Hedi Slimane helped define.
Which of the five jackets should you buy, and which will date?
Treat this as a five-way ranking rather than five equal options. Frog-closure and military-tailored jackets recur roughly once a decade, which is a decent sign they’re worth the spend now, since they’re unlikely to look dated by next autumn. Peplum, revived at Dior and Givenchy, and the full Napoleon jacket are more overtly nostalgia-driven, and pieces built that heavily on a single reference tend to date fastest once the reference stops feeling fresh.
Fit matters more than the label here. Judging by the Victoria Beckham and Niccolò Pasqualetti shows, a funnel-neck jacket only works with a low, uncluttered neckline underneath it, and reads best cropped to the hip so the collar isn’t competing with extra fabric below it. A drawstring jacket, by contrast, wants room: it’s built to be cinched and released, so anything already fitted underneath fights the point of it.
If you’re only building towards one combination this season, a structured frog-closure jacket layers more easily over a funnel-neck knit than any of the other pairings, since the closure sits at the chest and leaves the neckline free to do its own thing, rather than fighting the collar for space. Peplum and full military tailoring are best kept apart from each other, since both want to be the statement piece. Which of the five ends up as this autumn’s real signature in the UK is still being settled on the street rather than the runway, and that’s usually where it gets interesting.
